i've been trying to get my sound working on Mandrake 9.1 but it doesn't seem to detect my onboard sound. ive got a SB16 or compatable as onboard sound but linux doesn't recognize it or just doesn't see it. it works fine in windows. so now i have no sound. i even tried to recompile the kernel it still gives the same message on start-up the sound server could not find /dev/dsp and will continue with null output. how do i get it to see the soundcard and get sound working.

As root, try chmod 666 /dev/dsp and chmod 666 /dev/mi*

that no /dev/dsp is just a sign that the sound card isn't
working.
run lspci and look for what the soundcard is
or cat /proc/pci
it's a terminal command. i don't know the name of
the mandrake sound config tool, but i would guess
that if mandrake didn't get it set up on install, it
may not support your card.
another option is downloading alsa-lib,driver, and utils.
but you will still need to know what chip is there so
you'll know what driver.
sb compatible rarely means the sound blaster driver
will work. it usually means that when the driver is
loaded, sound blaster protocol can be used.
you can look in windows in your device manager
and probably figure out what sound chip is there too.

whansard>> thanks for the tip man, i checked in windows my sound chip is a cmedia 8330. i then found some help on the cmedia website and found the documentation for cmedia chips in the linux src. all i really needed to do was a modprobe sb and now i have sound.

I still have another problem my linux freezes at least three times a day on me. it never used to do this until i had to change my motherboard (my father fried my bios trying to upgrade the bios) and also before i used a linux native partition then i reformatted to ext3 partition. could this be the problem?

thanks for the help

did it just start locking up after you got the sound working?

anyway, hard freezes with no error message can be
anything, like memory timings too fast or some other
bios setting. for years linux would lock up about every
5 hours of mp3 playing before i switched to the alsa
drivers.

C-Media CMI 8330

Module snd-card-cmi8330.o for soundcards based on C-Media CMI8330 chips. This Module supports up to 8 cards.

from the alsa site. so if you think the lockups are
sound oriented, you might try different drivers.

if you think the problem may be video oriented, you
could get a different version of xfree86 or try some
different options with your current one.

no the freezing started before i got the sound working thats why it took so long to get the sound working coz my computer froze every now and again.

i next easy guess would be to disable dma on all
your drives, to see if that is it.
hdparm -d0 /dev/hda /dev/hdb /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

the computer will be slower, but this is just to figure out
what the problem is. if your computer can run for a day
or 2 like that without crashing, then you can try a different
kernel or slightly slower settings for your ide drives.

thanks i'll give it a try and see what happens. i'll let you know if this solves the problem.

thanks alot

whansard >> i don't think i'm gonna have to try the hdparm coz i ran it last night and not a freeze at all looks like it sorted out its own gremlins, for now anyway.

was it cooler last night than usual?

well winter just started over here so yes it was colder than usual.

i was just suggesting the possiblity of a heat problem.

well for now it seems to be ok so i'm not gonna worry too much about it thanks for all the help.