[ltp] tp 600E + sound: HELP!!!

[wes schreiner]

Bert Haskins wrote:

> wes schreiner wrote:
>
>> I don't don't think you want to do this, you only have a physical 
>> joystick port if you have a dock.
>
>
> Wes, are you saying that for Tpads that don't have a joystick port on 
> the laptop
> but do have one on the dock/port replicator, that port will work for 
> midi i/o ?
> The ones that I care about are the 770X/Z and 390/E/X


Well, the short answer is I don't know (yet).  My 600E doesn't have a 
joystick/midi port itself, and while there is such a 15-pin D connector 
on the dock, I've never hooked anything up to it.   OK, you made me go 
test it :-)  With PS2.EXE I see that my midi port is disabled, so I 
enable it.  It is using port 0x330 and IRQ 9, and "ps2 ? irq" shows that 
nothing else is using irq 9.  Back in Linux, "aplaymidi -l" still shows 
just the FM synth, but I haven't told ALSA about the midi port yet.  I 
add "mpu_port=0x330 mpu_irq=9" to the options line for the sound card.  
Now, after reloading ALSA (the easy way is to just reboot ;-)) when I 
run "aplaymidi -l" I get an additional port:

Port 64:0   Client name  CS4239 MIDI - Rawmidi 0     Port name  CS4239 MIDI

So it looks like the hardware is active, but the question remains, is 
the jack on the dock wired up?  To test that I have to haul a synth over 
to the laptop and hook up a midi cable.  OK, all hooked up.  Yes, midi 
out works!  I run "aplaymidi -p 64:0 somemusic.mid" and I hear 
somemusic.mid coming out of the synth.  OK, next to test midi input.  I 
run "arecordmidi -p 64:0 -d test.mid" and I can see output (the -d 
switch dumps output to the screen) and when I play test.mid I get what I 
recorded.  So midi I/O does indeed work fine with the jack on the dock, 
with my 600E.  Knowing this, I bet it works for other Thinkpad models 
too, at least those with similar sound hardware.

>
> (2) What would be your best guess as to the problem cause when sound 
> is near perfect with
> Kmidi, Xmms, Totem and  way too fast + badly!! distorted under 
> alsaplayer.
> I have this problem with FC1, FC2, RH9 on both desktop and 390... 
> 770.... systems
> and to make things even worse I can't get anywhere with Rosegarden and 
> other aps which
> I really want..


This sounds like a problem with alsaplayer, not with your sound 
hardware.  But I don't know, alsaplayer works fine here, though I don't 
usually use it.  I have alsaplayer 0.99.76 and am running ALSA version 
1.04 on kernel 2.4.26 with Debian patches and low-latency patches 
applied.  I've never experienced anything playing too fast, so I can't 
be of much help.  If you adjust the speed control in alsaplayer can you 
get the sound to play at normal speed?  If so, what speed does normal 
playback require?  That might give a clue about the problem .

wes