Okay, I'm a Newbie, both with linux and this forum, so please bare with me. The problem right now is the fact that the sound card is detected, but is disabled. I've tried everything I can think of (which isn't much) to fix this. If there is anyone who has any idea what I can do to enable my sound card I would appreciate any advise. I've been using my Sager notebook with linux for about 8 months now, and I'm still not very sure with linux, so I'll probably need a lot of clerification. Thanks!

How do you know it is detected and how do you know it is disabled? Or in other words, what do you mean by those words? (something says somewhere that soundcard exists, but no sound is coming out of it?) What sound card do you have?

The "lspci" command shows the card? There seems to be a driver loaded acording to "lsmod" command? good. Does the program complain something when you try use your soundcard (like starting xmms and playing an mp3)? no? Have you checked your mixer settings? (the "aumix" or "alsamixer" should do it)

Have you checked what problems others have had with your laptop model?

System Specs- Sager NP6120K2-X1, Soundcard is SIS7012 PCI Audio Accelerator

The sound card is detected, I found it under System Settings, Soundcard Detection, it tells me the correct soundcard, but it says in the same window that 'Module: disabled'. When I try to use the soundcard (just by popping in a cd and playing it with xmms) it acts like it's playing, meaning the time on the xmms display is going and it changes songs and such, but no sound comes up. With the mixers I used aumix and it came back giving me an error opening mixer, and I couldn't find alsamixer. With checking problems with other people with my laptop, I didn't find anyone with my laptop on the suppled page, but I'll continue to look with google and other sources.

Thank you for your help, and please forgive my follies as a newbie, I have a hard learning curve ahead, and I'm just trying to keep up.

Hi Tags,
I sympathise with you as I had lots of trouble setting up sound with my onboard sis sound chip. Below I have pasted a small text that I wrote on how I finally got sound to work for me. It should give you some pointer, eg in the use of isapnp, conflicts and error messages. As I said this is specific to my system so you will have to substitute your drivers as required.

BashTin.

To Set Up The Cmi8330 Sound Chip In Mandrake 3.0

Note: Mandrake 3.0 uses devfs which complicates the matter somewhat.

Install Sound Support In The Kernel.
During installation you will get to a section called system summary. You need to click on 'sound' and answer yes to having an isa sound card. This will compile in the low level sound support and load the sound modules aswell. At the end you get asked if you wish to start the sound and isa systems automatically, this seems a waste of time as it doesn't do anything!

Configure The On Board Sound Chip.
As root do the following -
pnpdump > /etc/isapnp.conf
This produces information on your plug and play devices and any possible resources they could use and writes it to the file /etc/isapnp.conf. You need to pick resources for each logical device by uncommenting the appropriate lines. IRQs seem to be the most troublesome in my experince, so make sure you pick IRQs that are not used by anyother devices - look in /etc/isapnp.gone. Below is my configuration as a guide.

# Id: pnpdump_main.c,v 1.27 2001/04/30 21:54:53 fox Exp
# Release isapnptools-1.26
# This is free software, see the sources for details.
# This software has NO WARRANTY, use at your OWN RISK
# For details of the output file format, see isapnp.conf(5)
#

# (DEBUG)
(READPORT 0x0273)
(ISOLATE PRESERVE)
(IDENTIFY *)
(VERBOSITY 2)
(CONFLICT (IO FATAL)(IRQ FATAL)(DMA FATAL)(MEM FATAL)) # or WARNING

# WSS
(CONFIGURE CMI0001/16777472 (LD 0
(IO 0 (SIZE 8) (BASE 0x0530))
(IO 1 (SIZE 8) (BASE 0x0388))
(INT 0 (IRQ 11 (MODE +E)))
(DMA 0 (CHANNEL 0))
(NAME "CMI0001/16777472[0]{CMI8330/C3D Audio Adapter}")
(ACT Y)
))
# MPU
(CONFIGURE CMI0001/16777472 (LD 1
(IO 0 (SIZE 2) (BASE 0x0330))
(INT 0 (IRQ 9 (MODE +E)))
(NAME "CMI0001/16777472[1]{CMI8330/C3D Audio Adapter}")
(ACT Y)
))
# JOYSTICK
(CONFIGURE CMI0001/16777472 (LD 2
(IO 0 (SIZE 8) (BASE 0x0200))
(NAME "CMI0001/16777472[2]{CMI8330/C3D Audio Adapter}")
(ACT Y)
))
# SOUNDBLASTER
(CONFIGURE CMI0001/16777472 (LD 3
(IO 0 (SIZE 16) (BASE 0x0220))
(INT 0 (IRQ 5 (MODE +E)))
(DMA 0 (CHANNEL 1))
(DMA 1 (CHANNEL 5))
(NAME "CMI0001/16777472[3]{CMI8330/C3D Audio Adapter}")
(ACT Y)
))
# Returns all cards to the "Wait for Key" state
(WAITFORKEY)



When this is done you are ready to try the configuration, do -
isapnp isapnp.conf
This instructs isapnp to install the card, reading the settings for the resources from the file isapnp.conf. If there are any conflicts this will be reported and will give you some clues as to what is wrong, re-edit the .conf file and try again. If everything went well you should have confirmation messages instead.

Install Sound Modules.
Now we install the sound modules. If you haven't got any of these you will have to get and install them. Do -
insmod soundcore
insmod sound
insmod uart401
insmod ad1848 io=0x530 irq=11 dma=0 soundpro=1
Use your own values for the resources for the ad1848 line as taken from the isapnp.conf file. Again messages should appear as the modules load, any conflicts will be reported. Now if you look in /dev you should find that directories have been created for sound/audio and sound/dsp. Also look in /var/log/syslog it should confirm the card has been found and installed with the resources requested.

Testing.
With Mandrake and devfs the simple old tests such as 'cat audiofile.au > /dev/sound/audio' or 'cat audiofile > dev/sound/dsp' are no longer allowed. So instead do - 'play audiofile.au' as a quick test. Hopefully all is still well.

Automate.
To install all this automatically at start up for all run levels just insert the commands asthey are above in the file /etc/modules and save.

XMMS
This is the default media player for Mandrake and requires a few options setting to work. Right click on the player and choose options->preferences. Make sure that the OSS Driver 1.2.7 is selected as the output plugin, then pick the CD Audio Player and click on configure, for 'device' enter the path to the relevant dev in the /dev directory. If you need some clues look in 'dmesg' or /var/log/syslog. Mine for example is
/dev/scd0 - for the liteonit cdrw or
/dev/hdc - for the cdrom drive
Then for the 'directory' enter '/mnt/cdrom' for the first drive or '/mnt/cdrom2' if you want to use the second drive instead. Click ok, then apply and ok on the next dialogue box. Now all should work as required.

hmm..those pnp-cards seem quite complicated.

If the card is really PCI-based card as it says, the installation could be as easy as sayingAt least the 2.4.21 kernel knows and have support for that SIS7012 card.

Or, if you have alsa sound system, the command would be something like(not sure about the alsa thing).

i had this problem a long time ago. i found all i had to do was add this to the append section of the lilo config:

noapic acpi=on pci=biosirq

worked perfect after that.