Hello everyone. I am able to troubleshoot most of my linux issues, but this one is causing me much anguish. My Satellite Pro 470cdt Laptop has run every major Linux distro with ease, and performed quite well. But on my switch to Slack 6 months ago, I was unable to configure sound to work, despite the fact that my sound card is supported. Officially, my card is listed as using Yamaha OPL3sa module, and modprobing proved useless. It plays CDROM music fine, but on trying to use mpg123, xmms, or xine, the error "no default libao driver available". I tried to use the ALSA drivers, but the compile continually fails stating issues resulting from numerous header files not being parsed correctly. I downloaded and unpacked the source for kernel v2.2.6, as the ALSA page reccomends a 2.2 series kernel, but still no luck. Any help anyone can give me is much appreciated.

Also, dmesg tells me that the opl3sa module is loaded, but dma, irq, and io must be set. I have tried setting them as my bios tells me they should be, but to no avail.

I've got a Toshiba Satellite 4010 CDS. I also had trouble getting sound to work with some newer distros. This is what I did to get it working. Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.modules, under the "Sound Support" section to include:

"/sbin/modprobe opl3sa2 mss_io=0x530 irq=5 dma=1 dma2=0 mpu_io=0x330 io=0x538 isapnp=0"

Without the quotes and change the values to what you need according to your BIOS settings. I hope this works for you too. See also http://wdalli.freeshell.org for my experience with this problem. That was when I used RHL mostly, been a happy slacker now for a while!

Yes, that seems to work as well. After I posted this morning, I sat down and did some serious modprobing. In the end, I swapped out a hard drive, installed RH6, and copied the modules.conf file. I then placed it onto the Slack drive, and it works great. I will put the info from the modules.conf file into rc.modules, just for cleanliness sake.
Thanks for the help. Slackware may be the best distro for the hard core, but it makes you earn your right to use it. This may have only been a small problem, but when everything works except one little feature (sound), it can make the whole experience a bitch. If anyone else is suffering from lack of sound on Slack (or BSD?) Satellite Pro 4** laptops, here is what is now in my modules.conf (and alternately, rc.modules):

alias sound-slot-0 ad1848
options sound-dmabuf=1
alias synth0 opl3sa2
options opl3sa2 io=0x388
options ad1848 io=530 irq=5 dma=0 dma2=0

I will try it for other distros, and eventually post it , along with my other experiences with the laptop in question, to LinuxLaptop.net, or whatever.

Thanks again