Configure ALSA for Crystal 4237B

Posted by Mark | Filed under Computers

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While having wireless Internet access is very sweet, I don’t currently have working sound on my laptop (it was also somewhat problematic with SuSE too). I’ve been googing for anwers and not had a lot of luck. I did find that I need to have acpi=off when I boot up or Ubuntu won’t be able to detect the soundcard. Other than that, all I’ve found so far is that I’ll probably have to manually specify all the settings for the soundcard, as detailed in this HOWTO. If this is something that you think you can help me with than you can read some details of my laptop after the jump.

lspnp –v
0f CSC0000 Crystal PnP audio system CODEC io 0x0530-0x0537 io 0x0388-0x038b io 0x0220-0x022f irq 5 dma 0 dma disabled

10 CSC0010 Crystal PnP audio system control registers io 0x0210-0x0217

lsmod | grep snd
snd_opl3_lib 10112 0 snd_hwdep 9220 1 snd_opl3_lib snd_cs4236_lib 16000 0 snd_mpu401_uart 7168 0 snd_rawmidi 22944 1 snd_mpu401_uart snd_seq_device 8332 2 snd_opl3_lib,snd_rawmidi snd_cs4231_lib 24832 1 snd_cs4236_lib snd_pcm_oss 47652 0 snd_mixer_oss 16768 1 snd_pcm_oss snd_pcm 84872 3 snd_cs4236_lib,snd_cs4231_lib,snd_pcm_oss snd_timer 23300 3 snd_opl3_lib,snd_cs4231_lib,snd_pcm snd 50276 11 snd_opl3_lib,snd_hwdep,snd_cs4236_lib,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_cs4231_lib,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer soundcore 9824 1 snd snd_page_alloc 9604 2 snd_cs4231_lib,snd_pc

cat /proc/asound/cards
--- no soundcards ---

alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

modprobe snd-cs4236 snd_port=0x534 snd_cport=0x120 snd_mpu_port=-1 snd_fm_port=0x388 snd_jport=-1 snd_irq=5 snd_dma1=0
Error inserting snd_cs4236 (/lib/modules/2.6.10-5-386/kernel/sound/isa/cs423x/snd-cs4236.ko): No such device FATAL: Error running install command for snd_cs4236

Update [15 May 2005. 7:57 PM –06:00 GMT]: I just realized that I left off some information that could be useful to diagnosing my sound problems. In the Gnome Multimedia Systems Selector, when I choose ALSA as the default output sink and hit the test button; I get this error:
Failed to construct test pipeline for 'ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture'

I’ve checked and my user is a member of the audio group, so I shouldn’t be having a rights problem.

Additionally, my laptop is a Dell Latitude CPi D300XT, see the complete specs here.