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Last Updated: August 05, 2001
This is the only aspect of the install that was problematic. I had no luck with the default Red Hat 7.1 audio drivers, so I compiled and installed the ALSA drivers (http://www.alsa-project.org), and so far it works great. I grabbed the 0.9.0beta4 drivers and did exactly what the INSTALL file said, and it worked right away. I also installed the alsa-lib-0.9.0beta4 and alsa-utils-0.9.0beta4 packages, but I don't know if those are strictly necessary.
Here are the options I used to compile the drivers:
./configure --with-isapnp=no --with-oss=yes --with-debug=detect --with-cards=cs4281 --with-sequencer=yes
Some of those options might not be necessary because I think they are the same as the defaults, but I specified them anyhow, just in case. Then I did a "make install" and it was all set. The install process also creates a start/stop file called /etc/rc.d/init.d/alsasound for you. You may want to enable that to startup automatically by running /usr/sbin/ntsysv and checking the "alsasound" option.
The only other thing I did was modify the /etc/modules.conf file. First, I removed the old cs4281 entry, which just left me with this (your file may differ slightly, if you have a SCSI card or other such stuff in your laptop):
alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
alias usb-controller usb-uhci
post-install sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L >/dev/null
2>&1 || :
pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S >/dev/null
2>&1 || :
You should keep the post-install and pre-remove option lines because the ALSA drivers always reset the levels to "muted" by default. Those options will save and restore the mixer levels to your settings whenever the drivers are loaded and unloaded.
Then I added the following lines, which are pretty much the same as the recommendations in the ALSA INSTALL file:
# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-card-cs4281
options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1
# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
Then I ran /sbin/depmod, to update all the module dependencies, and I rebooted to make sure everything came up OK, which it did.
You may need to set the volume levels for the first time because everything is muted by default. I set the Master Volume all the way up, the CD all the way up, and PCM about 3/4 the way up. Then you should be able to start playing sound files/CDs/etc.
If you still don't hear anything, you might want to hold down the volume "+" button on the front of the laptop for a few seconds, to set it all the way up. On my laptop, even the highest level doesn't seem that loud, so lower levels might be really hard to hear.