Hi all. First post here, from an untechnical newbie.
I put Mandrake 10 official on a new laptop (Toshiba A30), and am delighted with it. It does everything I want it to do, except one thing: no sound.
I've been trying to understand the problem, and I've come up with the following hypotheses...

Either I had better upgrade my ALSA, or my kernel.

This is on the basis that the Realtek soundcard which is not supported in the Mandrake 10 release may be supported in these upgrades.
I'm not sure if this is correct.

[When I run harddrake, the thing simply tells me that I have a soundcard, but I can't get it to offer me a selection of drivers, or whatever it is that I need].

Now, I thought that in order to upgrade these things (kernel, and/or ALSA) the easiest thing would be to simply upgrade to Mandrake 10.1 beta2. (Unfortunately, however, I can't d/l disc 2, but that's another story).

But, I saw a warning someplace, saying that it's unwise to use these beta releases for normal desktop use, due to instability or whatever.

What do you think?

Or is upgrading the kernal and/or ALSA a straightforward task? I've tried, I've managed to include one of the mirrors on the sources list, but I haven't found anything listed there that wasn't already available on the distro disks.
If this is the route I should go, where can I find a description of the steps to take? [I have searched around, but alas am too dim to understand half of what I read].

I'd be delighted if anyone, on or offlist, could advise me on this.
Thanks,

Declan

I did a quick search that suggested the A30 sound works with the intel 810 driver, which should be included in your alsa/kernel... You might have to play with insmod i810_audio or somesuch... Tho maybe there's a couple of variations in the model....

Some have suggested using OSS rather than ALSA - I've been compiling with OSS in the the kernel rather than ALSA, but I'm still living in the past maybe...

Hopefully you will get someone with some first hand info...

Thanks Amosf for the reply.

Little clarification of previous question which I acknowledge was complex, and convoluted.

There are probably two parts:

(1) How to get the sound card configured. This is not the main question (though it is my main issue). I would have posted such a question in the hardware section.

(2) The main question: Assuming that a kernel and/or ALSA upgrade would help (I don't know if this is a fair assumption), would a general upgrade to Mk 10.1 beta2 be an easy and safe way to do this?

[incidentally, the machine is a Toshiba A60 - 302, and not A30 as I mistakenly reported. I should never rely on memory for anything involving numbers.]

So, is the Mk 10.1 beta2 reliable enough for general everyday use right now, or will it cause me a pile of headaches? I've read some reviews, and it seems to work almost perfectly after the first install. But maybe the people writing these reviews are interested in something different to me... enthusiastic distro-watchers who like it because it represents the direction of progress, but not because it's actually usable.

Thanks again for the listening ears,

Declan

You could just upgrade the kernel. I run mandrake 10, but with the latest stable kernel which is 2.6.8.1, and the latest kernel gives you the latest drivers, which is always a good thing. downloading and compiling a kernel isn't all that bad, esp the new 2.6 kernels are fairly easy IMO.

Might be worth a search to see what others have to say about that machine with linux... You can probably pick up some hints there maybe.

I will wait for mandrake 10.1 stable before going that way, if at all... With the lates kernel already, I'll have to see what else mdk 10.1 offers before getting it.

Thanks again Amosf,

I'll take your caution into account, and investigate the upgrading the kernel option. If I get stuck, I may pop up again in some other forum.

Declan

when can we expect 10.1? because i want the latest kernal but would not have any idea about hoe to compile my own i am a complete newbie, although i did manage to get a wg511 wireless card working but i think that was kind of by chance....

Mandrake 10.1 probably won't have the latest all-singing all-dancing kernel, but compiling a new kernel for your machine is quite easy. Download the lastest full kernel source from www.kernel.org (it's 2.6.8.1) and extract it to /usr/src/ then have a read at this post >>> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...76#post1138676 for more instructions.

You will need to run xconfig as in the post and find the sound section, then enable the option Intel i8x0/MX440, SiS 7012; Ali 5455; NForce Audio; AMD768/8111 under alsa > PCI devices. It's probably one of Realtek's AC97 chips, built into the motherboard. I have one of those and that driver works well for me.

If in doubt, select all the different sound drivers as modules and see if it makes any difference with harddrake adter you compile,install and reboot.