I work as a technician for a non-profit computer recycling center that keeps old PCs out of the landfill. Busted ones get their components recycled, working ones get sold cheap to folks needing a PC. The fixin's my job. They're normally sold without an OS, i.e. M$ (too pricey for systems that normally sell for less than $100). This is a real drawback as most customers are computer newbies who really just need something to surf the 'Net with and write a few papers. Recently we've embarked on a mission to put Linux on these systems. That's my job too... but I'm a little green for the task so here I am!

At the moment I'm banging away at getting Damn Small Linux v0.9.3 on some old laptops with 1.5GB drives. Pretty successful so far (modem, Ethernet card...) except I can't get the onboard sound to work. I'm afraid I don't really know what to do. I know it needs a module for sound loaded but I don't know how to do that. Here's what I know:

They are Compaq Armada 7710MTs

Have:
ESS 1878 PnP AudioDrive
IRQ - 5
DMA 0, 1
I/O 0x0220 - 0x022F, 0x0330 - 0x0331, 0x0388 - 0x0388
ESS 1878 Audio Controller Interface
I/O 0x0250 - 0x0257
(garnered from Armada BIOS information, which is in a whacky place: the hard drive, a 'Compaq Diagnostics Partition'. Idunno if that's relevant)

Hey, what about that ALSA stuff? It's supposed to just work....I think... So I went to 'myDSL Click and Load' (I don't know how to install software...that's how green I am). Turned out 'alsadebs.dsl' needed 'gnu-utils.dsl' and 'dsl-dpkg.dsl' too so I pulled down all three. Then I ran 'Install ALSA' and it ran without any apparent errors. When I try 'alsamixer' I get:
"alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory"

There are a few things that I found elsewhere to try:
- dmesg doesn't list anything about sound at all (I put the whole thing at the message's end)
- neither does lspci
- When I boot, this goes by:
- 'modinfo soundcore' returns good stuff saying it's there
filename: /lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/drivers/sound/soundcore.o
etc.

"Soundcard: driver=ALSA(autodetect)
Preparing modules for alsa...

some stuff...

Restoring mixer settings: modprobe: modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-0
modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-0-0
failed"

Any advice you folks could give me would be great, especially getting sound to work in general. I've been working on a number of desktops with the same kind of trouble. Mostly Compaq Deskpros and Dell Optiplexes with nasty, special onboard sound. I've been playing with a number of distros for those (Slackware, VectorLinux, Mepis, Fedora, mostly using GNOME). Might be writing soon on how to get an internal modem card working soon... Thanks for your help!



- "Why don't we just put Linux on them? Well sure, I can do that! Can't be too hard...."

NtB