Hello!
I am an absolute beginner with linux, I have just installed a Mandrake power pack 9.1 in my pc together with windows xp. I have four major problems that prevent me from migrating fully to linux.
problem n°1: whenever I try to make a boot diskette, or even save data in a floppy, the system freezes and stops responding, obliging me to push the reset button. But I can read data saved under windows. So my linux can only read a floppy but cannot write on it.
Problem n° two:
I have no sound under linux. The sound device is "adi ad 1980 6 channel codec", integrated in the motherboard (asus p4 sdx). Looking through the forum I found other people with a similar problem. But I found no helpful answers. However I tried some of the commands advised there. For exemple this is what I got after typing "dmesg":

Linux version 2.4.21-0.13mdk (flepied@bi.mandrakesoft.com) (gcc version 3.2.2 (Mandrake Linux 9.1 3.2.2-3mdk)) #1 Fri Mar 14 15:08:06 EST 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001fffc000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000001fffc000 - 000000001ffff000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000001ffff000 - 0000000020000000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
511MB LOWMEM available.
ACPI: have wakeup address 0xc0001000
On node 0 totalpages: 131068
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 126972 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=linux ro root=305 quiet devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off
ide_setup: hdd=ide-scsi
Found and enabled local APIC!
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 2693.203 MHz processor.
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 5373.95 BogoMIPS
Memory: 515204k/524272k available (1410k kernel code, 8680k reserved, 1118k data, 136k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops, L1 D cache: 8K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: After generic, caps: bfebfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: bfebfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz stepping 09
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
enabled ExtINT on CPU#0
ESR value before enabling vector: 00000000
ESR value after enabling vector: 00000000
Using local APIC timer interrupts.
calibrating APIC timer ...
..... CPU clock speed is 2693.1162 MHz.
..... host bus clock speed is 134.6556 MHz.
cpu: 0, clocks: 1346556, slice: 673278
CPU0<T0:1346544,T1:673264,D:2,S:673278,C:1346556>
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20030122
ACPI: Disabled via command line (acpi=off)
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf10c0, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: ACPI tables contain no PCI IRQ routing entries
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Using IRQ router default [1039/0963] at 00:02.0
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16)
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
devfs: v1.12c (20020818) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
devfs: boot_options: 0x1
vesafb: framebuffer at 0xf0000000, mapped to 0xe0800000, size 131072k
vesafb: mode is 800x600x16, linelength=1600, pages=2
vesafb: protected mode interface info at c000:e4e0
vesafb: scrolling: redraw
vesafb: directcolor: size=0:5:6:5, shift=0:11:5:0
Looking for splash picture.... found (800x600, 25593 bytes).
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x16
fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with HUB-6 MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 32000K size 1024 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
SIS5513: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:02.5
SIS5513: chipset revision 0
SIS5513: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
SiS5513 ATA 16 controller
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xb400-0xb407, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xb408-0xb40f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
hda: ST380011A, ATA DISK drive
hdb: ST380011A, ATA DISK drive
hdc: HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8162B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: HL-DT-ST GCE-8523B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=9729/255/63
hdb: host protected area => 1
hdb: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=9729/255/63
Partition check:
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 p3 < p5 p6 p7 p8 p9 p10 >
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0: p1 p2 < p5 p6 p7 p8 p9 >
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 65536)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 47k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Mounted devfs on /dev
Mounted devfs on /dev
Freeing unused kernel memory: 136k freed
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-ohci.c: USB OHCI at membase 0xe8917000, IRQ 9
usb-ohci.c: usb-00:03.0, Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 3 ports detected
usb-ohci.c: USB OHCI at membase 0xe8919000, IRQ 9
usb-ohci.c: usb-00:03.1, Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (#2)
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 3 ports detected
usbdevfs: remount parameter error
usb.c: registered new driver usblp
printer.c: v0.11: USB Printer Device Class driver
Adding Swap: 1052216k swap-space (priority -1)
0: nvidia: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 nvidia.o Kernel Module 1.0-4321 Wed Mar 5 19:13:04 PST 2003
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Vendor: HL-DT-ST Model: CD-RW GCE-8523B Rev: 1.03
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
i2c-core.o: i2c core module version 2.7.0 (20021208)
i2c-algo-bit.o: i2c bit algorithm module version 2.7.0 (20021208)
Linux video capture interface: v1.00
bttv: driver version 0.7.100 loaded
bttv: using 4 buffers with 2080k (8320k total) for capture
bttv: Host bridge is PCI device 1039:0655 (Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS])
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 00:09.0, irq: 10, latency: 32, mmio: 0xef000000
bttv0: detected: Pinnacle PCTV Sat [card=39], PCI subsystem ID is 11bd:001c
bttv0: using: BT878(Pinnacle PCTV Studio/Ra) [card=39,autodetected]
bttv0: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... not found
bttv0: miro: id=0 tuner=0 radio=no stereo=no
bttv0: using tuner=0
bttv0: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9875 @ 0xb0... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA7432 @ 0x8a... not found
tvaudio: TV audio decoder + audio/video mux driver
tvaudio: known chips: tda9840,tda9873h,tda9874h/a,tda9850,tda9855,tea6300,tea6420,tda8425,pic16c54 (PV951)
tuner: probing bt848 #0 i2c adapter [id=0x10005]
bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 ... ok
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
hdc: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
MSDOS FS: IO charset utf8
MSDOS FS: IO charset utf8
MSDOS FS: IO charset utf8
MSDOS FS: IO charset utf8
MSDOS FS: IO charset utf8
MSDOS FS: IO charset utf8
MSDOS FS: IO charset utf8
MSDOS FS: IO charset utf8
sis900.c: v1.08.06 9/24/2002
eth0: Realtek RTL8201 PHY transceiver found at address 1.
eth0: Using transceiver found at address 1 as default
eth0: SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet at 0x9800, IRQ 5, 00:0c:6e:d4:f0:27.
inserting floppy driver for 2.4.21-0.13mdk
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/52x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
eth0: Media Link Off
no AD1816A based soundcards found.
Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 439M
agpgart: Unsupported SiS chipset (device id: 0655), you might want to try agp_try_unsupported=1.
agpgart: no supported devices found.
0: NVRM: AGPGART: unable to retrieve symbol table
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE,EPP]
parport0: irq 7 detected
lp0: using parport0 (polling).

...................................

when I type "aumix" it returns an error message "error opening mixer".
I also tried "lspci" and I got this:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0655 (rev 10)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SG86C202
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0963 (rev 25)
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7012 PCI Audio Accelerator (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7001 USB Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7001 USB Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7002 USB 2.0
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 91)
00:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
00:09.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
00:0a.0 Multimedia audio controller: GemTek Technology Corporation PCI Radio (rev 01)
00:0c.0 Communication controller: Tiger Jet Network Inc. Intel 537
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0185 (rev a4)


I leave the other problems for later.
Thank you very much for helping me resolve these problems