Yes, I know this is an old question, in various forms. BTW, I'm not exactly a Linux newbie (I'm a UNIX oldie), but I'm new to this forum.

Anyway, hwinfo supplies the following:


34: PCI 10.1: 0403 Multimedia controller
[Created at pci.277]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_10de_26c
Unique ID: wRyD.v6Qu7J6dWE9
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:10.1
SysFS BusID: 0000:00:10.1
Hardware Class: sound
Model: "Hewlett-Packard Company MCP51 High Definition Audio"
Vendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
Device: pci 0x026c "MCP51 High Definition Audio"
SubVendor: pci 0x103c "Hewlett-Packard Company"
SubDevice: pci 0x2a3a
Revision: 0xa2
Memory Range: 0xfe024000-0xfe027fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
IRQ: 7 (no events)
Module Alias: "pci:v000010DEd0000026Csv0000103Csd00002A3Abc04sc03i00"
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown


I recently Googled something that suggest I needed to upgrade to a 2.6.20 kernel to get the motherboard sound to work, but I'm not willing to do that (I don't care that much - it just seems like there's a simpler solution).

Any idea how I can get the onboard sound to work with the standard 10.0 SUSE distribution, running on a POS Compaq PC without a separate sound card, but apparently has the above-mentioned sound hardware? I know the sound worked when I recently bought the PC with Windows XP on it, so the hardware should be find (same cables, speakers, connection, etc.). This seems like a config and/or driver issue...

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks

Are you sure it's not working with the stock snd-hda-intel module? Try to load it into the kernel and see if it works
There is no need to upgrade your kernel, if you don't want to, you can just upgrade alsa.