Hi all

I'm having real problems with my awe64 soundcard. I recently did a clean install of rh9 after using rh8 for a few weeks. Under rh8 the card was detected and worked perfectly. When I installed rh9 it also detected the card but it doesn't work. I read on lq that I might need to turn off PnP in the bios. To be extra sure, I removed the card and re-booted and selected to remove any configuration for the now missing card. I then booted up with the card inserted, making sure to disable PnP first. I thought the problem was solved as it configured my card and sound was working perfectly. However, next time I rebooted the problem was back. I get no sound whatsoever; just a bunch of error messages. If I try to open volume control, for instance, I get "Unable to open device '/dev/mixer'". And running 'modprobe sb' gives:

/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o: init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o: insmod sb failed

A similar message appears every time I shut down. If I run 'sndconfig', the automatic setup fails (though it does find the PnP card), and any number of manual IRQ settings etc. all fail.

The only thing I can identify myself as a possible cause is that my box is a Compaq with an onboard soundcard. In win98 I had to disable it. The onboard soundcard doesn't show up in the hardware browser, however, and it never caused any problems in rh8.

Can anyone please help me solve this problem?

You may want to try the alsa driver.

Ok thanks.

Sound has inexplicably started to work again for the time being, so I'll just leave it alone until it goes wrong again. Then I can try the driver you suggest. When I shut down I (used to) get a message which I think is telling me it can't find the necessary module (are the shut down messages saved in a log file? - it flashes by a bit too fast). I therefore tried to re-build the kernel (to make sure all the necessary modules were there) but something went wrong with the module-building process and it didn't work. I'll have another go at that one day - when I'm not in the middle of my finals maybe!

Best, Ian