Okay, I have a SigmaTel AC97 sound card on my laptop. I modprobed the ac97 and ac97codec modules from /lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/drivers/sound without a problem, and still no sound.

So then I try something I read on another board and modprobed the i810_audio module and this is what I get....

also, when I type "alsamixer" it says "no elems available"

Okay maybe this will help....

This is what I get when I type dmesg:

ALSA ../alsa-kernel/pci/intel8x0m.c:401: codec_semaphore: semaphore is not ready [0x1][0x700300]
ALSA ../alsa-kernel/pci/intel8x0m.c:416: codec_write 1: semaphore is not ready for register 0x54

It pretty much repeats like crazy..

okay, last bit of data..

this is from lspci

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)

i seriously have no clue how to fire this thing up

Have you tried (as root) depmod -A to check your kernel modules?

Tried it, nothing came up.

I also used lsmod on the i810_audio module.

root@darkstar:/# lsmod i810_audio
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
input 3200 0 (autoclean)
iptable_mangle 2072 0 (autoclean) (unused)
ipt_MASQUERADE 1304 1
ip_nat_ftp 2736 0 (unused)
ip_nat_irc 2128 0 (unused)
iptable_nat 15438 3 [ipt_MASQUERADE ip_nat_ftp ip_nat_irc]
ipt_REJECT 3160 1
ip_conntrack_ftp 3888 1
ip_conntrack_irc 3024 1
iptable_filter 1644 1
ipt_state 504 9
ip_conntrack 19236 2 [ipt_MASQUERADE ip_nat_ftp ip_nat_irc iptable_nat ip_conntrack_ftp ip_conntrack_irc ipt_state]
ip_tables 12416 8 [iptable_mangle ipt_MASQUERADE iptable_nat ipt_REJECT iptable_filter ipt_state]
ndiswrapper 55924 1
snd-pcm-oss 37736 0 (unused)
snd-mixer-oss 12504 0 [snd-pcm-oss]
uhci 24444 0 (unused)
ehci-hcd 17580 0 (unused)
usbcore 59308 1 [uhci ehci-hcd]
hw_random 2712 0 (unused)
i810_rng 2528 0 (unused)
snd-intel8x0 18924 0
gameport 1420 0 [snd-intel8x0]
snd-mpu401-uart 3200 0 [snd-intel8x0]
snd-rawmidi 12740 0 [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 3888 0 [snd-rawmidi]
snd-intel8x0m 9544 0
snd-pcm 56072 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-intel8x0 snd-intel8x0m]
snd-timer 13604 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-page-alloc 6328 0 [snd-intel8x0 snd-intel8x0m snd-pcm]
snd-ac97-codec 49500 0 [snd-intel8x0 snd-intel8x0m]
snd 30852 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-intel8x0 snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-intel8x0m snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec]
soundcore 3396 7 [snd]
b44 13708 1
ds 6548 1
yenta_socket 10336 1
pcmcia_core 39972 0 [ds yenta_socket]
ntfs 51424 1 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 9328 0
agpgart 43940 6
root@darkstar:/#

Why do I think that module is the problem?

I don't mean to sound......impatient, but can someone please help me? I honestly have no clue what I am doing....

Try the advice on this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/198091

I just got mine working. For some reason things were all muted even though I had turned the volumes to 80%. I am pretty new to slack and am used to having sound done for me. Anyways my solution was the use the amixer command to unmute the channels.

amixer set Master 100 unmute
amixer set PCM 100 unmute

and so on

the 100 is the % volume level and the Master|PCM is the channel name

Actually, that never worked (and still shows "no mixer elems").

But I did get it to work, by compiling all the drivers into the 2.6.7 kernel and installing it

Well at least it worked in the end...