This oddysey started when I had no sound coming from anything but my games. Since then I have been able to configure the ALSA drivers and now enjoy not only my games, but also sound files on the hard drive. The problem is that ALSA Player is the only application that will play a CD from my drive--and the sound is weak and tinny.

The other players:

• 1. XMMS
  2. Totem
  3. KsCD
  4. Noatun

will not play CD's from the drive. However, XMMS, Totem and Noatun will all play files from the hard drive--and they sound great.

Just learned this morning that Totem crashes when I try to play a CD. As I find out more about that, I may be able to "zero in" on the cause.

The contents of /dev/cdrom/ are confusing. Hang on, this is hard to explain.

The file /dev/cdrom/cdrom0 points to /dev/cdrom0 which points to /dev/cdrom1 which points to /dev/cdrom/ (If the computer is as confused over that as I am, no wonder I can't play anything from the player. )

I haven't yet used harddrake to find out what the distro thinks is there and I also haven't yet tried to find other commands that may help me identify the problem. I was hoping that someone here could point me in a direction so that I wouldn't "spin my tires" in directions that will give "dead ends."

BTW I'm running an hp 300i DVD +RW/ CDRW drive on an Athlon AMD 1 GHz and I have an Audigy2 Platinum-ex sound system that runs from ALSA drivers. The DVD drive appears to work quite well as a data drive. No problems reading--haven't tried writing yet--copying and all that stuff. In fact, I installed the distro from it.

Another thing that I will try if there's no joy in this effort, is re-installing my former CDRW drive and see if it works. However, sooner or later I need to configure the hp.

Well, I think /dev/cdrom should point to /dev/scd0, if you have a ide drive and use module ide-scsi, but in some cases it points to /dev/sr0, if it exist. Check what is associated with /mnt/cdrom in /etc/fstab.

I don't think removing that dir and replacing it by the correct link will give any trouble, since no program can be using such self-referencing links. However, as usual, this comes with NO WARRANTY

good luck

PS: if you installed it yourself, did you remember the thin cable from cdrom to audio card?

Thanks, ac1980, and "roger" on the "NO WARRANTY." Sometimes I wonder if my PC will reboot after I "play" for awhile.

I'm not at home right now, but will post the results of my investigations. Your info will be a the heart of my troubleshooting. If it does turn out to be the "little wire," I will post a "one word," socially inappropriate reply.

I had a similar problem with my modem. The file /dev/modem did not exist and I discovered quite by accident that it was assigned the "non-existant" TTyS4. I kept following all of these virtual drivers until I got to real 0's and 1's and created a sim-link to it. Modem works great now.

Thanks for the help.

I discovered some interesting, and confusing stuff last night, but didn't have time to post before I left for work. I'm waiting for an e-mail that I sent myself with results of some "catting" I did. Looks like it might be a hardware configuration situation. Just wanted to let you know that I hadn't forgotten.

I can now play CD's on XMMS. I lost the ability to do so on ALSA Player, but now I know that it's just a matter of configuration.

There were two things.

I was caught between ATAPI/IDE drivers and SCSI emulation. Got that figured out and stuff arranged, but then still couldn't play anything. Learned that without the input plugin, xmms-cdread, the "little wire" between the cd player and the soundcard needs to be hooked up. I don't have any place on my soundcard for that. I installed the plugin, google the name and you can get a list of rpm's for different distros, and xmms works great.

Like I said, can't play in ALSA Player right now, but it's just a matter of figuring out what's going on.

There are a lot of posts in this forum by individuals having problems similar to this one. I learned that the solution is at least one of four things--if not a combination of them. Later on today, I will post a more detailed account of how I solved this. Stay tuned.

The xmms-cdread plugin did the trick.

For anyone who has been interested in this thread, I have posted my troubleshooting process and what I did to fix things over in the "Success Stories" forum, here.

Thanks for being interested.