Rescue IBM T21 From Trash

[fleamour]

Hi

Ubuntu 10.04.2/3 LTS was around the sweet spot for my ageing T series, all bugs seemed squashed.  But then there were regressions with my crappy sound chip, eventually culminating in an instability bug (upgrade to 12.04 LTS) where cursor would randomly disappear resulting in a system wide freeze.

Frell, I figure some distro must work?  Lubuntu, Mint LXDE, Fedora LXDE all failed to install.  Finally Mint XFCE installed but crappy sound chip problems.  I figure the system is doomed & give up.

Now then, I guess the quickest way is to try, but thought I'd run it passed the forum first.  Anyone have PCLinuxOS installed on a T series with working sound, especially after resume from suspend?

The only other distro I can think of trying is Mageia. 

Anyone?!?

   

[ThirdOfSix]

It has been a while since I played with that model computer.

But about half of the laptops that I have used have had crummy and very low volume sound even on Windows which they were supposedly made for.

I don't even try to use the built in sound on laptops anymore.

I always just use one of the USB sound modules that are available in the five to seven dollar range whenever I look for them.

They have always worked just fine and with reasonable volume levels.

I have several of them here and have yet to find a computer on which they don't work.

Oh yeah, I guess I should mention that I almost never use any distribution but PCLOS.

Once in a while if I am seeing something that does not seem right, I'll boot up one of the other distributions that also use kde to see if the same thing happens there. If it does, I don't bother reporting it on the forum unless someone else asks about the problem.

That way I don't add to the burden of our developers when it becomes clear that it is a kde problem and not a PCLOS problem.

[fleamour]

Thanks.

Sound really bugz I, if you not guessed!  The T21 sounds considerably better than it's modern Lenovo E325 replacement.

[horusfalcon]

Hmm... the sound system in the T21 is an old Cirrus Logic?  Let's see now... according to the ThinkPad Specifications Reference website it's a... Cirrus Logic CS4624.

I remember my old ThinkPad 600e (which had another Cirrus Logic sound system, the CS4232).  It was troublesome, but back then I didn't use PCLinuxOS (another distro with a funny-colored hat?).  I seem to remember knocking around in the driver a bit... let me check my old notes.... nope, that's too far back.

Aha... looks like this is an AC'97 device?  Here's a link to the datasheet for the CS4264...

You might try playing around with the headphone volume slider and see if that acts as your actual master volume control.  If so, there's a parameter you need to pass the driver.  I do have some notes about that... (I forget where I found this originally... line number at left are from the original source)

2050   AC97 Quirk Option
2051   =================
2052   
2053   The ac97_quirk option is used to enable/override the workaround for
2054   specific devices on drivers for on-board AC'97 controllers like
2055   snd-intel8x0.  Some hardware have swapped output pins between Master
2056   and Headphone, or Surround (thanks to confusion of AC'97
2057   specifications from version to version :-)
2058   
2059   The driver provides the auto-detection of known problematic devices,
2060   but some might be unknown or wrongly detected.  In such a case, pass
2061   the proper value with this option.
2062   
2063   The following strings are accepted:
2064       - default   Don't override the default setting
2065       - none   Disable the quirk
2066       - hp_only   Bind Master and Headphone controls as a single control
2067       - swap_hp   Swap headphone and master controls
2068       - swap_surround  Swap master and surround controls
2069       - ad_sharing  For AD1985, turn on OMS bit and use headphone
2070       - alc_jack   For ALC65x, turn on the jack sense mode
2071       - inv_eapd   Inverted EAPD implementation
2072       - mute_led   Bind EAPD bit for turning on/off mute LED
2073   
2074   For backward compatibility, the corresponding integer value -1, 0,
2075   ... are  accepted, too.
2076   
2077   For example, if "Master" volume control has no effect on your device
2078   but only "Headphone" does, pass ac97_quirk=hp_only module option.

Give that a try.  You'll probably need to open PCC and get in the Options dialog of your sound card's driver configuration to pass these parameters to it.

Jot back and let's see if we can get that old anti-quey going.

Later On,
D

[fleamour]

@horusfalcon

Many thanks for your kind offer of help.  The unit has been trashed already.  Part frustration, part the march of technology.  I bought it second hand on eBay Dec 2006, so almost six yrs use.  The battery & ODD needed replacing, made in 2k, so done my bit for recycling!

[gandy]

It's not clear from your last post whether the laptop still runs or not. If it still runs on AC, you could use it as a digital clock by installing Win95, Win98 or WinME. There is a program called LCARS24 that runs in DOS or Windows. You can find more info here http://lcars24.sourceforge.net/

[fleamour]

When I say trashed, I mean binned, chucked, & in all likelihood destroyed.

[horusfalcon]

Ah, well, sorry to hear.  At least ye recycled. 

Later On,
D