I have been struggling with audio problems on my Thinkpad a20m.  I am
unable to play mpeg or midi files on the Cirrus Logic sound card.  CDs
work fine, but everything else produces a dull grinding sound.

I experimented with switching around the irqs, but that didn't really
change anything.

I compiled a new kernel and apparently changed the output of dmesg with
one of the options.  Now instead of reporting what was found where, it
prints out a whole bunch of these:

clcs0: AC97 read fail (VSTS==0) for add=0x1a
clcs0: AC97 read fail (VSTS==0) for add=0x1a
clcs0: AC97 read fail (VSTS==0) for add=0xe

I don't really understand what this message is indicating or how it might
be fixed.  Also, which kernel config option turned normal dmesg output
off?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nathan