I know this has been done a thousand times but I havent found anyone that has had this problem. Tried compiling a custom 2.6.8 for alsa and no oss. Compiled ok, reboots, everything is fine. Except no sound. OK, run alsaconf and it says that it cant find a driver for my soundcard. By the way, have a thinkpad r40 with an integrated i810 soundcard ac97 codec. Works perfectly when I recompile for oss with the i810 driver. Thought it may be the kernel source and am just downloading updated 2.6.8 source at the moment, but if I fire up my stock 2.6.7-i-386 kernel that I installed with and try and run alsaconf, then I get the same problem. Have read lots of problems after the alsaconf part but not before. If I do a lsmod with the 2.6.7 I get these lines

snd_intel8x0m 18632 0
snd_ac97_codec 59268 1 snd_intel8x0m
snd_pcm 85412 1 snd_intel8x0m
snd_timer 23172 1 snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 11144 2 snd_intel8x0m,snd_pcm
snd 50148 5 snd_mixer_oss,snd_intel8x0m,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer

then if modprobe snd-intel8x0 I get this


snd_intel8x0m 18632 0
snd_ac97_codec 59268 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m
snd_pcm 85412 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m
snd_timer 23172 1 snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 11144 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_pcm
snd 50148 9 snd_intel8x0,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_mixer_oss,snd_intel8x0m,snd_ac97_codec,s nd_pcm,snd_timer


which shows that the module is loading. Even when I run scanmodem, it tells me that the snd-intel8x0 module should be the one for my soundcard.
Any ideas?

have you tried the snd_pcm_oss (or snd-pcm-oss on 2.6.x) module to see if you get sound? (add it in with all the other modules).

its not so much that I dont get sound (ok it is) but that alsaconf says that there isnt a driver for my card. Hadnt tried any further after I got to that point. Is there any point or can alsaconf lead you down the garden path?

if you modprobe them all in manually and use alsamixer to unmute the channels do you have sound?

I've been using alsa for years and have never run alsaconf before, if your hardware wasn't supported by the snd-intel8x0 module the module would refuse to load. (thats no guarantee that it will work, only that it should)

Don't feel bad man... I've been fighting with my Audigy LS for ages and finally got part of it working. The OSS drivers work wonders, but you can only run 1 sound program at a time with OSS. (I think, is there a fix?)

I got the new 1.0.8 ALSA and with the ALSA drivers the sound is jumping and lagging.

Dunno. Will try it as soon as my kernel src finishes downloading. (as soon as I use alsa base it stuffs my modem, which is the next thing that I have to get running with alsa)

O.k got it working after adjusting alsamixer. Even writing this from my new kernel, with my winmodem working, even without the alsa support for it (not sure why its working but not complaining) Can only have one sound going at a time though. ie, if xmms is running then mplayer wont run. Is this right or is it configurable to make more than on input work at once?

Thats the same problem I'm having.....ALSA switched you to OSS...my OSS will let me only have one program using the sound driver at a time...it sucks... We both need a good fix! Can anyone help?

Now I'm confused. I can run xmms with the alsa driver, with the arts driver and the oss driver. How can it run with oss when I'm running alsa, or is that the oss emulation. Another annoying thing with xmms is that it will stop half way through an album, telling me it cant access the sound card. Dunno if its because the system, uses it briefly and then xmms cant use it. Anyone else had this problem and know a fix for it. Doesnt seem to happens when I use the arts driver.

Have installed libasound-2 and dev. Can now run alsaconf. Xmms seems to be happy. Still cant run mplayer at the same time. Have recompiled my modem to use alsa module, but cant get that to work if xmms is running either. I read somewhere that you can have two channels on pci devices or something like that. How do you get that happening. When I run my modem, I can run it on hw:0 but if I try hw:1 it says no such device. Then if I try and use it, it comes up with something about channel settings. Anyone have a clue?

try this for mixing of audio channels:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin

Do you thinkthat will let my modem and something else work at the same time?

dunno I've never had a setup like yours. But even if it doesn't, it will at least solve one of the two problems ( more than one application using the same sound card) and you can move on to the second problem.