dsp not being there is an error in not having your sound cards modules installed or running. Try using sndconfig to set up your sound card.

i tried but it says the sis7012 is not supported.
i found this site but all the links to redhats site are old and i get a 404 error

did you check the alsa site to see if your card is supported?

i just did and it does. the driver you got from sis is
meant for a specific kernel. it's not working with yours.

download alsa, and follow the directions on that site for
your card.

SiS 733
SiS SiS 735 intel8x0 aka SiS 7012
SiS SiS 740
SiS SiS 745

This problem is actually very easy to fix, although with all the suggested tweaking by others, it may be too late! In the control center where the sound info is displayed (as shown in the original post), click on "run config tool". The dialog box says the default driver is snd-intel8x0. That's wrong. The correct driver is i810_audio. It is listed as an alternative driver. Click ok, and you're good to go. I can't remember if I had to restart? Enjoy.

tried but still no sound,

edit:
I get this when I run the config tool
"You card currently use the OSS "i810_audio" driver (default driver for your card is "snd-intel8x0"
and I will change it and it always stays the same

try modprobe i810_audio
the modules that start with the name snd_
are alsa i think
and ones that start with
the chip name are the original kernel old style sound.

Those compile #errors happen if you try to compile the module source without having done a "make dep" in your kernel source directory.

I was watching on start up and I saw linux load "i_810 module"
if that helps any. Why doesn't everything distro have the hardware recognition of knoppix? Oh, well

Just out of curiosity. If I was able to get an old pci sound card out of an old computer and disable my built on one, would mandrake most likely recognize an old sound card?

95% chance it would. i would say.

I did an update, changed the driver, and now I'm listening to crystal clear mp3s. Thanks everyone

The sound driver creates the device files (/dev/dsp, /dev/dsp0, etc.) when it successfully initialises. I had exactly the same problem as you, and I fixed it. You'll need to compile your kernel to do it. I'm assuming that since you've made more than six hundred posts, you know how to do that already.

The kernel shipped with Mandrake 9.1 is 2.4.21. I have heard that you can fix your problem by applying the ACPI patch, available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/acpi. This is not the way I did it, I patched my kernel to 2.4.22 instead. Either way, you should compile your new kernel with ACPI support enabled (under General Setup in the config menu), sound support enabled, and the SiS7012 driver compiled as a module.

Once you've done that, turn the ALSA service off (I don't know how to make this sound hardware work with ALSA, it's kernel drivers only), and edit your /etc/modules.conf file to add the line:

alias sound i810_audio

Comment out any other lines relating to sound if you like, although it doesn't seem to matter. Probably best to make sure the new line goes before any other sound-related lines though, just to be safe. I find for myself that if I comment out the ALSA-related lines in my modules.conf, something just puts them back for me.

And that's about it. Reboot and you should have sound. If you find that your CD drive stops working after you've done this, then you can fix this by disabling scsi enulation, by editing the append line in your /etc/lilo.conf to read "hdc=ide-cd" rather than "hdc=ide-scsi" as it probably is at the moment.

Hope that gets you going. Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Smeg. I didn't see the second page before I went off half-cocked. Please ignore everything I just said.

:-(