[wplug] Soundcard woes

[J Aaron Farr]

Hello.

I just picked up an older Sony VIAO and I'm having some problems with
the video card.  The documentation says it's a Yamaha AC-XG Audio device.  
RedHat's sndconfig says it's and Intel AC'97 Audio device.  Linus's little
sound clip fron sndconfig plays just fine.  Plus, what little online 
info I could find about this sound card said that using the Intel drivers 
should work fine.  But once I've run sndconfig, Linus's greeting is the last
thing I hear.  From that point forward, the only sound I get is some really
distorted feedback.  Now actual sound, more just like static and other nasty
electrical noises.  I figured it was all just a sound card thing and that I 
would either need to dig up more documentation online, buy a new card, or 
try to fix it myself.  However, just tonight I installed Loki's Quake III on
the computer and Quake crashes on start up saying: 
   "/dev/dsp: No such device"
So now I'm a little confused.  The device file is there, I know it is. 
Then I notice the permissions were only 'cr---------', so I changed
that so that users could read and write to it.  Now Quake no longer crashes
but instead gives me the same static.

I don't know if the quake episode really sheds any light on the subject but
I figured it was relevant.  Any thoughts anyone?

thanks
jaaron