sound issue on older laptop

[Christine Navarro]

Hello all,

This is my first post and I hope I give all the proper info.  I took an 
Intro to Unix class and a Linux admin class at the local community college 
so I know just enough to be dangerous. :S  Recompiling kernels and 
installing new packages wasn't covered in class, although I am loving 
Ubuntu's Synaptic... wow.

Always trying to push the envelope, I've installed Ubuntu on two older 
laptops (and no, they don't meet the "minimum system requirements") for 
experimentation purposes.  I have a newer machine that will be a server 
eventually, but it is running like a champ and I really want to learn all 
the ins and outs of this system.  I am having trouble with Alsa on one of 
them.  I followed the instructions I was able to gleen from the net on the 
oldest laptop (a 233 mghz pentium) and the sound card now works like a 
charm!  (I typed alsamixer at the terminal prompt and adjusted the levels 
and voila! working sound.  Most excellent!)

The 2nd laptop, which is actually a little newer (it's a Gateway Solo 9100 
with docking station, and a 366 mghz Pentium II.)  It seems to be running 
pretty great, despite the age... the family loves using it as a 'surfing the 
web' machine...  I believe my problem may be related to the particular sound 
card it has installed.  According to the alsa website, you can't just load 
in the module for the Yamaha OPL3 cards without specifying all the settings. 
(I believe it may use a Yamaha OPL3-sa card due to a post I found from 
someone with the same model machine. If there were a way to confirm this, 
even if it means pulling the puter apart, I'm game.)

My bios says the following about my card:

I/O address:  220H-22FH
MPU-401 I/O address: 330H-333H
Interrupt:  IRQ9
DMA channel:  DMACH0
Wave 2 DMA:  DMACH1

When I attempt to run alsamixer on this machine I get the following error 
message:

function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory

alsactl restore gives me the following:

alsactl: load_state:1267: No soundcards found...

lsmod | grep snd shows that no snd modules are loaded

Through Synaptic, I see that alsa-base and alsa-utils are installed.

I've seen a lot of instructions on the net for installing and compiling alsa 
into the kernel, but it seems that if Synaptic shows it as installed, that 
shouldn't be necessary, however, I am a total noob, so anything's possible.

If you've read this far, I'm eternally grateful.  What should my next step 
be?

Christine (total noob) Navarro