Fellow Slackers,
I upgraded to Slackware 11.0. I haven't reinstalled in years so don't anyone mention reinstallation as a solution option! There's a solution and we'll find it!!!

Everything is working except sound. Sound is skipping and I can't for the life of me figure out what's going on with it. I have an AC97 sound card and I'm using the snd-via82xx driver. This was the driver correctly identified by running "alsaconf"

Symptoms:
- Skipping sound while playing anything
- Configuring sound from KDE's Control Center causes the CPU to peg out and eventually it gives up. It then procedes to run a useless loop of restarting but not really doing anything.
- Reinstalling alsa packages changes nothing.
- Before the upgrade I was running a custom rolled 2.6.17.7 kernel with alsa compiled as modules. I am now running linux-2.6.17.13 that comes with Slackware 11.0.

Here's lsmod's output:
Module Size Used by
snd_seq_dummy 2820 0
snd_seq_oss 28928 0
snd_seq_midi_event 5888 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 43984 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_pcm_oss 38048 1
snd_mixer_oss 15616 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_via82xx 22808 2
gameport 10760 1 snd_via82xx
snd_ac97_codec 86304 1 snd_via82xx
snd_ac97_bus 2048 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm 73736 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer 19332 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_mpu401_uart 6016 1 snd_via82xx
snd_rawmidi 18720 1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device 6284 4 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi
snd 43364 13 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mpu40 1_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device
soundcore 7136 2 snd
snd_page_alloc 7560 2 snd_via82xx,snd_pcm
ipt_LOG 6272 0
xt_limit 2176 0
ipv6 223584 53
xt_tcpudp 3200 20
iptable_filter 2304 1
ip_tables 11352 1 iptable_filter
x_tables 10500 4 ipt_LOG,xt_limit,xt_tcpudp,ip_tables
sg 26524 0
pcmcia 30116 0
firmware_class 7424 1 pcmcia
yenta_socket 23436 0
rsrc_nonstatic 10752 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 34192 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
capability 3336 0
commoncap 5376 1 capability
lp 9800 0
parport_pc 24132 1
parport 30024 2 lp,parport_pc
pcspkr 2432 0
psmouse 34952 0
usb_storage 78528 0
evdev 8064 0
shpchp 33816 0
i2c_viapro 7572 0
i2c_core 16528 1 i2c_viapro
ehci_hcd 29064 0
via_agp 7808 1
agpgart 28080 1 via_agp
serio_raw 5252 0
via_rhine 19460 0
mii 4864 1 via_rhine
uhci_hcd 19724 0
reiserfs 239088 2

I didn't see anything pertaining to this in /var/log/messages or in dmesg. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I was running Mandriva 2006 with the AC97 chip and snd-via82xx drivers using KsCD to play music and I had skipping problems. I re-ran ALSA config and then made sure that KsCd was using ALSA in the configure panel, all the skipping and dead spots disappeared.

Thanks for your feedback but that wasn't the problem. I'm continuing to work on it. I'll post back if I can figure it out.

More specifically the error from KDE's control center that eventually comes up is:
"Error - artsmessage"
"Sound server fatal error:"
"cpu overload, aborting"

Another symptom is that Kaffeine locks up and is unreliable. I know it's not the application software because I have 2 identical systems in terms of application software.

I haven't been using my sound on this system in quite some time. I'm starting to wonder if I don't have another problem, like failing hardware. I may try to install another sound card. This one is integrated on the motherboard but can be disabled.

Any other thoughts or ideas?

Well folks...

I've been trouble shooting and gotten no where on this sound card. So I put in an old card I had, disabled this one on the BIOS, booted up and things are swell. Looks like a hardware problem. So, on this motherboard I've had a graphics failure, a sound card failure and a floppy disk controller failure. The floppy failure was the most exciting. It melted the insulation on the wire and the plug right into the floppy drive. Plastic burning, smoking and dripping everywhere. But the system has been really good otherwise ;-)

Thanks for trying to help me out.