hey, now for my second problem. it seems that hard drake in fact HAS detected my sound card but it still doesn't play any sound. an error keeps poping up that says that it's not configured properly. now as obvious as that sounds....
anyway, i opened hard drake to configure my card and it said it detected it as an ensoniq 1968 or something like that. but it still doesn't work. so i chose every coice of sound card it gave me and tested each one of the coices but none of them worked. I'm pretty sure that my sound card is soundblaster but all the soundblasters that it listed didn't work. does anybody have any idea what i can do to get my card working??

thanks in advance.

Try typing this:

su -
modprobe sb

And see if it works

i'm guessing you are using mandrake, right? ummm... well, usually mandrake does a super neat job of setting up sound cards automagically... did you do a mandrake install with the card or did you add the card after an install?

this might seem odd, but it might do the trick: remove the card, boot the computer, let mandrake see it's been removed, shutdown, put the card back in, let mandrake see and re-configure the "new" card... if physically removing the card is to much of a pain in the buttocks or impossible or very un-cool, then you could start checking the configuration... but before that you need to be SURE what sound chip you have. you can know this by looking at the chip on the card... once you know, make sure you are using the right module for it...

you could also boot one of those "live" cds and see how the sound works on them... if it works decently right away, then you can base your configuration on the one the live distro used... plus you'll get the piece of mind of knowing that even though you don't have your sound running on your box right now, your card DOES work with linux and you WILL have it up soon.

http://slackware-live.org/

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

something like this happened to me on mandrake once and it would happen every time i installed again... the card was detected but would not make a sound... i found out that at the part in the install where you get to configure everything like video, network, sound, boot, etc. even though mandy had my sound card correctly detected (i would normally just leave the sound configuration alone), when i went into the sound configuration and just hit okay without changing anything, the sound would work. felt like a bug, or at least some kind of insect. =)

i did the romove sound card, turn it on to let it know it's not there, then put it back in and turn on and run hard drake again.

this time it's not saying anything about configuration, it's saying(big error) :

/lib/modules/2.2.15-4mdk/misc/sb.o:inil_modules: Device or resource busy/lib/modules/2.2.15-4mdk/misc/sb.o: insmod/lib/modules/2.2.15-4mdk/misc/sb.o failed /lib/modules/2.2.15-4mdk/misc/sb.o: insmod sb failed.

DOES ANYONE KNOWS WHAT THIS MEANS!?!?

Did you try:

su -
modprobe sb

It's an error related to a module (sb) which could not be loaded... apparently

oh, and the type of sound card is an esoniq 1868, it was right.

and where exactly am i supposed to type
su-
modprobe
??

Hi Derek-kun!!

You should type that into a terminal. Terminal in Linux is the best tool. Try to get rid of Mandrake's evil tools as fast as you can because they don't work as effective as it should, in my honest opinion.
If you are running Gnome, you should find a terminal called gnome-terminal. It looks like old DOS times, but it's filled with plenty of useful stuff. Other examples are rxvt, aterm, xterm and many others. They should be at your main menu somewhere

The command su will turn you into a root user. Root is more or less like an Administrator into a M$ Windows Environment, but you really have control of the stuff. You will be asked for the root password when doing it. Be careful when logged as root. You can easily ruin your system deleting/moving/adding/changing stuff while into root. The command modprobe loads modules. As for a joystick for example, modprobe joydev would do the job. I'm suggesting modprobe sb because I've an old laptop with a 100% sound blaster compatible and that is the module which works for me .

i figured out how to type the thing, and when i did, it came up with the same error i just typed in a little while ago.

hmmmmm... Lemme see....

Some basic stuff about console for you don't be mad while using it:

ls = will "list" the currently directory stuff.

Using tab in the console is a great way navigating it. For example, let's say you have a directory called:

this_is_a_huge_name

To get into this directory, you can type only

cd this_

followed by the tab key. Tab will type the full name for you. Okey, done with it, let's try to find the modules to your sound card. Fire up a terminal again as you did before, then log in as root:

su -

Go into /lib/modules/<number of your kernel>/kernel/drivers/sound

Please note: This is a Redhat path and may differ from distro to distro as well kernel numbers. Once into /lib/modules, type ls to list the contents of your directory and in there, get into your kernel correspondent number/name. The idea is for you to find the path /drivers/sound

More important commands:

if you are lost, use these commands whereis <name of the thing you are looking for> or locate <name of the thing your are looking for>

Supposing you have arrived to /lib/modules/<number of your kernel>/kernel/drivers/sound (or found your equivalent), type ls again to list the sound modules available in there. I've here two modules for esonic available. It may be different into your machine as well. Anyway, here you have a bunch of modules to load and test. The command you know:

modprobe <your sound card module>

Try untill you can get it to work. If you don't, check Mandrake's homepage for hardware compatibility. If it's supported and none of the modules worked, you may need to recompile your kernel and enable support for your sound card type...

Good luck my friend. I know it can be hard sometimes and I'm a terrible teacher (and believe me, I'm studying to become one...ghehe) don't you give up, Linux rulz after you make it to work as you wish, but perhaps somebody can explain this in a easier way. Again, good luck

try upgrading your kernel, yours seems to be a little outdated; maybe it will have some better drivers

well i tried installing 9.1 but my computer really sucks so the only version it really works well with is 7.1 so i guess i'm gonna go through some trouble to make things work.

Megaman X,

i did what you said but apparently there is no directory that has drivers/sound in it. or from what i've looked in.in the folder named after my kernel number, there is no folder inside that is called kernel. i did a whereis for drivers/sound and the closest thing it came up with was etc/sound, and that's just sound event's.

please post your hardware specs. mandrake 9.1 can run on some pretty outdated machines... it has some very light window managers like blackbox and icewm for example... or did you already try it and didn't like it or it didn't work?

by the way, are you sure it's an ensoniq 1868 and NOT an ESS 1868???

cuz i've been googling for ensoniq 1868 but everythings seems ESS 1868... just wondering...

http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/modprobe.8.html

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...owto/x1008.htm

http://www.mail-archive.com/expert@l.../msg22826.html

i'm thinking that it's possible to get kernel 2.2 to work with the card (if it's an ess at least) but i think kernel 2.4 would have less trouble...

are the alsa rpms installed?

rpm -qa | grep alsa

oh and did you try or is there any way you can try with the live linux cds???