hello, this is my post, so if i forget some important facts please apology me.
i've installed debian 3.0r on my vaio VAIO PCG-FR215S, right now i'm stuck trying to configure the sound card. the sound card is a

00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5451 PCI South Bridge Audio (rev 02)
Subsystem: Sony Corporation: Unknown device 8158
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
I/O ports at 8800 [size=256]
Memory at e0401000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

I've installed alsa driver (ali M5452) and alsa lib along with alsa utils. it seems like that the modules are correclty loaded; in fact lsmod tells:

Module Size Used by Not tainted
snd-pcm-oss 36164 0 (autoclean)
snd-mixer-oss 10912 1 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-ali5451 11492 1 (autoclean)
snd-ac97-codec 33936 0 (autoclean) [snd-ali5451]
snd-pcm 57920 0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss snd-ali5451]
snd-page-alloc 4512 0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm]
snd-timer 13632 0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm]
snd 28224 0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-ali5451 snd-ac97-codec snd-pcm snd-timer]
soundcore 3844 3 (autoclean) [snd]
hostap_cs 48072 1
hostap 67332 0 [hostap_cs]
hostap_crypt 1572 0 [hostap]

the snd modules are automatically loaded when i try to play something
but i get no sound.
any idea?
i've unmuted the channel, i simply rised the volume with alsamixer (is this correct or should i do something else).

I'm using kernel 2.4.19

I've read the the 2.5 kernel has "bult in" alsa, do you think it would be esaier?

thanks.
Matteo

Hello...
I'm using Mandrake 9.1 with Sony PCG-FR215S with "trident" alsa drivers and all works ok.
Could you try the "trident" ("Trident 4DWave DX/NX, SiS 7018 or ALi 5451 PCI Audio Core") driver?
I hope this helps.

Have you tried changing lcd screen brightness??
Thanks (and excuse me for my really poor english)

Leonardo