Anyone have a PIII-500 CF27?

I'm at my wits end with this. I have had three of these so far, purchased from different people, and I haven't been able to get the sound to work in any of them! I'm reasonably sure the speaker itself is ok. (I ohm'ed it out while I had the case open ) It is enabled in BIOS. It occasionally makes a "system sound".. Like when XP was installing, it made the unmistakable sound of a PCMCIA card being recognized. If I hold the power switch down to turn it off, it makes the "warning tone". so the problem is not in the speaker itself or in the output circuitry.

Anyway, XP recognizes the sound chip (ESS allegro) natively and assigns resources to it. I have tried all the ESS sound drivers on the .ca site and they either do the same thing as the built-in driver, or lock the system up.

So if any of you have one of these odd beasts, please let me know what you are using for a sound driver. I'm stumped!

 

Any sound from the headphone jack?

 

I don't have one here now, but I have had many of them. Sound was one thing that I don't ever recall having any trouble with. Win98, Win2000 Pro, or XP.

Really stretching here, but have you tried your Fn+F4, Fn+F5, and Fn+F6 keys?

Some laptops require a hotkey driver to make the sound and screen brightness re-enable if they have been turned off or all the way down with the driver.

I have never came across this with a toughbook, but I see it in the shop all the time with other manufacturers. Sony Vaios are the most common one.

Try the keys and see what happens.

James

 

My first CF27LBAGHEMBKB worked a treat with Win2k Pro SP4. When the audio stopped working, there was no indication in Device Mgr of hardware malfunction but I reloaded the driver anyway. Still no audio from speaker and headphone jack. Oddly, the beep tones are there. No audio with XP SP2 as well.

About the same time, the rear USB port went dead (I tested with a USB HDD and USB audio plug). Nothing.

When mounted onto the CF-VEB272A port replicator, rear headphone jack was still quiet but USB audio worked.

A replacement CF-27LBAGHEM has everything working as it should, dual-booting from Win2k & XP. Perhaps I shorted a circuit somewhere when fiddling with a faulty USB card reader but to have 3 mute 27s is unusual. I'd be interested to know how you solved that puzzle.

 

Never could get mine to work either. Tried several (hundred?) drivers. Off the factory CD, the Panasonic website and even different drivers (soundbaster compatible, etc) I tried on and off for 2 years before giving up. 98SE always showed a yellow ! in the device manager. At work now, so I don't have the specifics on the machine right now....
Had 2 CF-27 300's without audio problems.

 

Muz (old thread)

Did you ever reload the OS on the one with the borked sound? A reload using the original factory cds?

Otherwise there must be a little buzzer speaker on the mobo for booting sound alerts, separate from the main sound system. Just like a lot of desktop mobos.

 

Honestly, I don't believe my machine ever made a peep. Never tried to reinstall WIN 98SE.

 

Guess what.. I just got another P3-500 today. I put the HD in from the last 500 to see if everything was working OK.. I almost fell out of my chair when the Windows bootup music started playing! No joke.. I've got one that works! So from this we can conclude that it is nothing at the software level that is causing the problem on the other ones.. It must be something in hardware. Strange though that the no-music ones still make BIOS-level beeps. I'll have to check the BIOS rev of this one and compare it to the others.. I wonder if that may have something to do with it?

 

Just as an FYI, the 27L has a pretty common problem with the sound going out on the mainboard.

 

Do you know what is failing when this happens?

 

IIRC, the sound chip itself. There's something about the modem daughterboard that likes to short them out but once the sound chip is replaced the first time, it doesn't seem to go out a second. I'll check with a friend of mine to be sure though.