No sound for Dell Optiplex GX/pro
 

First post alert:-)

I'm trying to repatriate a Dell Optiplex GXpro 200 USB off Windows/NT to RedHat 9. It's a
dual-cpu 200MHz dinosaur with 128MB, SCSI based storage and CD-ROM.

So far I've got it dual booted fine using grub, using an smp kernel 2.4.30-31smp but not able to get sound working.

This system has on board NIC and sound, as well as a Creative ViBRA16X PnP:Audio card. From other posts, I see this tool, lspci, to list what PCI cards are installed(?) and it shows this:

[root@peewee sbin]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma] (rev 02)
00:0d.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II] (rev 01)
00:0d.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
00:0d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371SB PIIX3 USB [Natoma/Triton II] (rev 01)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21052 (rev 02)
00:11.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U/UW/D / AIC-7881U
01:08.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905 100BaseTX [Boomerang]
01:09.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 30)
01:0a.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA 2064W [Millennium] (rev 01)

However, when I run System Settings -> Soundcard Detection, it doesn't find any

But, when I run System Tools -> Hardware browser, it lists the Creative card for 'Sound cards'.

I think this suggests a conflict but unsure how to triage further.:-(

I was unable to find the 'sndconfig' tool mentioned in other posts, so I'm stuck. Oh, sound on WNT was fine.

Have you tried looking in the kernel to see if anything that you might need for the sound card was disabled?

Can you be more specific as to the "what" and "how' to do this? I'm still a newbie on this setup, though I'm becoming "dangerous".

OK, I went to /usr/src/linux and ran menuconfig; it appears to me that the proper components are loadable modules; not sure what else to check.

I think the root problem is the discrepency between thwbroser utility which says that I have one

"Creative ViBRA16X PnP: Audio",
Manufacturer unknown,
Driver 'sb';

while redhat-config-sound says no soundcards were found. a dmesg revealed this:

isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: SB audio device quirk - increasing port range
isapnp: Card 'Creative ViBRA16X PnP'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total

How can I check if indeed I have this 'sb' driver, or what else canI do to triage this? thanks.

p.s. reading a similar thread, I installed realplayer (10) and I can hear CDs!

but redhat util still says I have no sound card....

i dont know man im still a beginer too...i was just trying to push you in the right direction.

thanks; at this point it appears the conflict is a red-hat issue; as this unit has on board sound too, I think I'll pursue that next.

p.s. while googling "linux on-board audio how to" I found this:
http://support.intel.com/support/gra...inux/audio.htm

seems the right stuff for me, maybe others too. it offers step-by-step instructions; more later...