So I new at this, but I will cut right to the chase. I have a Mandrake 9.0 computer and I have two sound cards in it. One is an onboard sound card and the other is a SB16 sound card. I have run sndconfig in the prompt and it keeps finding the onboard sound card. I have looked into disabling the onboard but there is no setting in the BIOS to disable. In past distrubutions the SB16 card has worked with out problem but now is no longer detected. Windows still finds it ok.

Where can I start?

Try to manually set the configuration if you can in the bios to set irq5 up as legasy isa. If you have the option it should be under pci configuration or something like that.

Show us the output of lsmod (as root) and lspci -v. You have to make sure the SB16 driver modules is loaded while making sure the onboard on is NOT loaded.

Right now I can't get the SB16 modules to load. I can only get the onboard to load but I will tell you what where they are, and maybe someone knows what I am doing wrong.

lsmod:
Module Size Used by Not tainted
lp 6720 0
parport_pc 21672 1
parport 23936 1 [lp parport_pc]
isofs 25652 0 (autoclean)
inflate_fs 17892 0 (autoclean) [isofs]
af_packet 13000 0 (autoclean)
ppp_deflate 41024 0 (autoclean)
bsd_comp 4344 0 (autoclean)
ppp_async 7456 1 (autoclean)
ppp_generic 20064 3 (autoclean) [ppp_deflate bsd_comp ppp_async]
slhc 5072 1 (autoclean) [ppp_generic]
sr_mod 15096 0 (autoclean)
floppy 49340 0 (autoclean)
ip_vs 74328 0 (autoclean)
nls_iso8859-1 2844 1 (autoclean)
nls_cp850 3580 1 (autoclean)
vfat 9588 1 (autoclean)
fat 31864 0 (autoclean) [vfat]
ide-scsi 8212 0
scsi_mod 90372 2 [sr_mod ide-scsi]
ide-cd 28712 0
cdrom 26848 0 [sr_mod ide-cd]
cs4232 3780 1
ad1848 22220 0 [cs4232]
uart401 6628 0 [cs4232]
sound 55732 1 [cs4232 ad1848 uart401]
soundcore 3780 0 [sound]
rtc 6560 0 (autoclean)

lspci -v
00:00.0 Host bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1531 [Aladdin IV] (rev b3)
Subsystem: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1531 [Aladdin IV]
Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 32

00:02.0 ISA bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV] (rev 07)
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0

00:0b.0 IDE interface: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5229 IDE (rev 20) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32
I/O ports at 7400 [size=16]

00:0d.0 USB Controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
Memory at 10300000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]

00:0f.0 VGA compatible controller: 3Dfx Interactive, Inc. Voodoo 3 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: 3Dfx Interactive, Inc. Voodoo3
Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 9
Memory at 0c000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
Memory at 0e000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at 7000 [size=256]
Expansion ROM at 0b100000 [disabled] [size=64K]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 1

The sound card is an isa card just incase someone thinks that maybe relivent

I have a system with the exact same problem, it only works if I setup the pci controller in the BIOS manually and set irq 5 to ISA

It should just work with the isa-pnp module. Load that first then the sb16 driver. I think it's just called sb.

When I installed Slackware 9.1, my Sound Blaster 16 was not recognised due to a clash on irq5 with a PCI USB hub. I uncommented and modified the appropriate line in my /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file to settings suitable for my system and now all is OK.

# Sound Blaster Pro/16 support:
/sbin/modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=7 dma=3 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x330

Responce to DavidPhillips: I can't change any IRQ or any other settings of that nature under my BIOS.

Responce to adz: I know PnP should work but doesn't. I don't know why.

Responce to allend: Where would I put that line of code in my modules file?

try it on the command line and see if it works

I think we are getting someplace, but now no sound is played.

Search through the /etc/rc.d/rcmodules file for the line:
# Sound Blaster Pro/16 support:

Then edit the line just below this.

And check volume levels.

I don't have a rcmodules file but I do have a rc.modules are they the same and if so I only have about 17 lines of code in that file.

The volume is fine, XMMS just doesn't play any file. It starts to play a file and then stops the file does esist and does play on the onboard sound card.