CF-R9 : no sound ! (in windows/linux) + wiki

Hey there

Got myself a small CF-R9, really like the small form factor and lightness

One issue is that I don t have any sound under windows 10 nor lubuntu 20.04 ... I am wondering if you folks may have some hints ??
(I tried with the internal speaker or a headset ... but I am not sure my headset plug is good with the R9 as that old R9 has 2 separate sockets for headset + mic and my headset plug does both ...)

Besides that I've also started a wiki page :
https://panasonic.fandom.com/wiki/CF-R9

Thanks !

 

PS : sound is working good with an USB speaker ... maybe I need to find a small one ... (unfortunately no bluetooth on this old R9) ... or maybe I can buy a cheap usb to bluetooth adapter (I think I ve seen some for less than 5 usd on aliexpress ...)

 

PS : wow sound seems to be working after I put it to sleep and then wake it up !
... not working after a restart ... but after sleep and wake up again it works ! (and with my headset too )
... tried the sound driver from Official Support Download Center of the Drivers, Manuals and FAQs | TOUGHBOOK | TOUGHPAD | Panasonic Global Notebook PC (for the CF-S9 which is also a 1st gen intel Core) ... no luck ...

I also have an unknown device ACPI\MAT0019\2&DABA3FF&7 ... seems like it s an "hotkey" device ... let me install the one from the CF-S9 ... => yes it s good now no unknown device anymore ..

PS2 :
sound is quite bad with this tiny speaker, very high but volume is not too bad, better than my CF-C1 and comparable to my CF-SZ5 and maybe not as high as my CF-SZ5 (maybe because the R9 is thicker and has more physical volume than the SZ5)

 

That hotkey device might very well be the reason you don't have sound.

 

yeah ... installed the hotkey driver and utility from the S9 ... but still no sound after a reboot and playing with the sound hotkeys (mute and volume) ... sound works again after sleep and wakeup though ...

 

no text ---deleted

 

hotkey app (activated when pressing sound buttons) doesn t look like old win7 panasonic though ... looks more like microsoft win10 ... I am wondering why ??

 

oh I ve been more careful and installed the old hotkey app from https://askpc.panasonic.co.jp/s/download/install/r9kw.html#model2 and now it looks like I have sound after reboot !

just let me check if I reboot again
=> confirmed ! it s working now !

 

now cloning the HDD to a SSD ... I read that it s a pain to open the R9 though : http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/just-got-my-hands-on-a-cf-r9.821481/

also I have an 8GB DDR3 RAM chip that I am using for my CF-C1 ... I tried to put it inside the R9 and the R9 almost booted with its 10GB RAM (booting went further in Linux than in Windows) ... I am wondering :
is the internal 2GB RAM chip removable ? if yes will the R9 work OK with a single 8GB RAM chip ?? any opinion on that ?? thanks again folks !

 

Don't do this. Cloning a HDD to a SSD screws up the alignment. Reinstalling is the best practice when upgrading to a SSD.

 

oh I stupidly damaged one screw ... I think it s one of these long screws that holds the bottom and the top body parts together ... I stupidly turned clockwise instead of anticlockwise and it seems that now that the damage is done that the screw is too tight and I can t unscrew it now ...

btw I can confirm it s hard to get inside the R9 ... with apparently only one screw left the top still holds well ... the keyboard holds well also but it looks like there are some clips that hold it ...

 

Nope. It's ok.

 

thanks ! I did use EaseUS Todo Backup but I don t think I ve ticked that option ...

 

use any ssd alignment tool if you want to, nothing bad.

 

luckily my cousin is a specialist in electronics reparation and he was able to kind of redo the screw-head with a small driller

I can confirm, as said there

that it was a pain to get inside the R9 (one difficulty is that there was some strong double adhesive tape that was holding the keyboard to the body)

but with the SSD I am now much more happy with my R9 : it starts fast enough and is fast enough to browse the web

 

Pretty sure you can align it with Windows.

I am not sure I recall correctly, but I think you use the system detail page. Maybe recheck the performance and that aligns everything.
I am sure a quick Google will tell you.

 

OK I checked , as advised on https://www.diskpart.com/articles/align-sdd-after-clone.html, if my partitions were 4K aligned and only the last one (an extended partition) was not aligned ... didn t find a way to redo it from Windows so I redid it from linux ... according to msinfo32 all my partitions are 4K aligned now ...

 

Found this. For future readers.
----------------------------------------
If you install Windows7 on a brand new SSD, you need not make any special arrangements because the Windows7 installer will do the alignment for you. For Vista you are lucky because the start sector happens to match a SSD page. For XP the start sector is 126 which would be in the middle of a SSD page, thus a prior alignment is required.
A similar situation is present when you clone an existing OS (including Windows7) on a new SSD.
--------------------------------------

 

I guess I initially created my last (extended) partition from linux, that's why it wasn't 4K aligned ...

 

Makes sense

 

anybody made a triple boot (Windows, Linux, ChromeOS) on their machine ?
my R9 gets a little hot on Windows ... I need to check it more on my linux boot ... maybe try ChromeOS too ...

PS :
according to https://github.com/sebanc/brunch maybe triple boot with NeverWare CloudReady / FydeOS is safer than ChromeOS ?

PS2 :
most of the tools I see for dual booting ChromeOS/NeverWare CloudReady are mostly for UEFI Bios so the R9's legacy bios might be an issue ...

 

If you’re still having problems with sound,
Look at MxLinux website
There’s alit of information on sorting out the sound with AlsaMixer


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

thanks but I already sorted the sound issue by installing hotkey drivers and apps from https://askpc.panasonic.co.jp/s/download/install/r9kw.html#model2

I see MX linux has xfce and is quite light ... maybe I ll try it ... right now it looks like if I use Edge instead of Yandex browser on my R9 then it heats up a little less on Windows ... on linux I am using Yandex browser because it s the only browser I ve found that has a good implementation of the "top bars" auto-hide feature, but I can t comment yet on the heat produced as I haven t used linux (lubuntu 20.04 currently) long enough ...

 

Sound does not work on any linux distro on cf-c2 out of the box. You have to use pulse audio or alsa mixer to make the headphone unmuted while unplugged. You will have to do this every time you reboot.
I made a simple solution since this seems to affect the these and a few other models. Tested on Mint and Arch. Just find and edit the analog output speaker conf file.
Try the new mint that just got released

usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output-speaker.conf and when the file opens
find this section:
CODE:SELECTALL
; This profile path is intended to control the speaker, let's mute headphones
; else there will be a spike when plugging in headphones
[Element Headphone]
switch = off
volume = off
Change it to this:

CODE:SELECTALL
; This profile path is intended to control the speaker, let's mute headphones
; else there will be a spike when plugging in headphones
[Element Headphone]
switch = mute
volume = merge
2. Save and close the file, ignore the terminal warnings and reboot.

 

I tried NeverWare CloudReady on an USB stick and it s working well not too much heat and performance is good about 12400 with octane v2 (Chrome under linux is about 11400 and Edge on windows is about the same if I remember ...)

The issue is that it won t auto-update ... and it can t be installed to another usb stick, only to main hardrive (which contains my Windows 10 & Linux setup ...)

 

wow apparently I should be able to triple-boot ChromeOS according to https://github.com/sebanc/brunch/issues/77 !
(or Successfully Dual Boot ChromeOs and Windows 10 in legacy BIOS / MBR without installing Linux OS · Issue #705 · sebanc/brunch (github.com) )

(I initially thought there would be an issue with my legacy BIOS ...)

PS : Oh no : "Intel Gen 1 graphics do not work with ChromeOS versions above r81" according to sebanc/brunch: Boot ChromeOS on x86_64 PC (supports most Intel CPU/GPU or AMD Stoney Ridge) (github.com)

 

mmm ... I have a fast W10 computer at home ... with a fast internet connection both at home and on my phone ... so I can just RDP into my home computer to solve my heat issue (and this feels faster too) ... just had to install RDPWrap on my fast W10 home computer because it has MS W10 Home edition ...

 

mmm ... improved that a little bit : now using kimmknight's remoteapptool so that I can start remoteapps from my CF-R9 as if they were running on it (so that I can more easily use local and remote apps at the same time on my CF-R9) (only issue is that I can't run remoteapps on W10 Home on my fast PC so I have to run them on my CF-C1 (W10 Enterprise), which is still much faster than my CF-R9 ... and it keeps my CF-R9 cool ... maybe I ll upgrade my fast PC with W10 Enterprise ...)

PS :
oh no there is an issue with a certificate when I want to access a remoteapp from outside my home LAN ... it doesn t seem to be so easy to solve ...

 

I don't remember if I said it already but my R9 had quite a big screen flaw (yahoo auction seller cheated on the pictures and Zenmarket said they were not able to do anything) ... so I bought a CF-R8 1.6Ghz https://www.facebook.com/groups/665300826967101/permalink/1907303322766839 ... quite happy with it as it s not so slow and it seems to run a little bit cooler than my R9

 

Glad it worked out for you.