I have installed Madriva 2006 Power pack on Shuttle SD11G5, and I'm having problems with sound (lack of it to be more exact). SD11G5 has Creative Labs Audigy LS sound chip on motherboard, and that particular chip is blacklisted on ALSA project.

I could not see any errors in /var/log/messages for audio initialization. In fact everything audio related seems to work without errors, except that there is no audio coming from the speakers. I have seen lots of posts in the net about the same issue, but the recommended actions such as toggling digital out switch with alsamixer have not helped.

I tried to load latest drivers from opensound.com, since their web page lists Audigy LS as supported card. However, installation failed because installer was not able to unload existing drivers. It seems to me that Madriva has compiled the kernel without module support and that was causing the hick up with oss. (I may be wrong here - not much experience with Linux) Would I need to recompile my kernel to get the new OSS drivers in and would that help with the problem at all? It's been a looong time that I played with the kernel builds, and I'm not sure if I will get that right.

Is there a way to make Audigy LS working in Madriva or am I better off walking to a store and buy a sound card that is for sure supported? If so, which card would you suggest? (taking into consideration that my motherboard has only PCI express slots- one 1x and one 16x).

- Juhani

I don't have Mandriva so I can only make a general suggestion. Run alsamixerui and check to see if the various channels are muted or not and if the volume levels are high or low. Try unmuting all of the channels and moving all of the volume controls to their highest level. That is what fixed my problems with my VIA AC97 chip on the motherboard.

If it were me, I would probably run "alsaconf" to detect and configure followed by "alsamixer" to fine tune and then "alsactl store" to save the settings. If it squeals, I think you have to turn down AC97 or something like that.

If this doesn't work, get the latest alsa and have a look on their site, then repeat the above steps. and if THAT doesn't work (i'd be getting desperate by this point!!) then compile a brand new kernel with full alsa support... then repeat the above steps!

I'm sure they are supported, but you may have to play around a bit.

Good luck my friend!