I'm running Mandrake 9.2 with KDE 1.1.3 (or is it 1.13??)on a Dell XPR-R400 (now 700). I can't get any sound from the Sound Blaster Live card I pulled from my Dell XPS-T700r (now 1400). It appears that although the ALSA drivers exist, they won't run. Going to Mandrake Console for selecting processes show the driver but when I click on Start, I get a message the drivers aren't running. Run at Boot is selected. Suggestions? I'd try to use KMix to see if sound is muted, but when I open KMix all I get is a blank window. Thanks!!

I know enuff to be dangerous.

I think I have your answer. The Dell Sound blaster card is not a sound blaster. it uses a diffrent chipset (emu10kx) that only dell wrote drivers for. you can see if you can find drivers on teh dell site but most sites I searched for this problem says that dell had Creative labs make this chip for them and they did not make Linux drivers.

below are some quotes from suport sites

http://opensource.creative.com /:
"The Dell CT0200 -- The new Live 5,1 card from Dell (CT0200) is not
based on the EMU10K1 chip, under the EMU10K1 to driver available AT
SourceForge won't work with it."
AFAIK, the only way to make this card produces sound on Linux is to
buy the BETA binary-only drivers from 4Front AT to mere U.S. $35 to per
seat (and Ím stuck with 40 of these that I really needed
sound support on)...

hope this helps. The only segestion I have is write dell and tell tem to suport the card for linux (since they aer a red hat partner and mandrake is is red hat with some tweaking) or buy a real SBlive card...
sorry I could be more helpful (I have a SBlive from a dell but aperiently it's before dell changed chipsets but it did come eith the PIII 500 some one traded me for labor

Willaim S. Huskey
Network Engineer
SAIC
"there are 10 types of people in this world. They who understand binary and they who do not"

Thanks for your help. I stumbled across the solution. I threw the Mandrake install Cd and lo and behold the ALSA drivers weren't installed. A couple clicks, a reboot and after fifteen minutes total time CSN&Y was blasting away.
I also got KMixer to work by reloading. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get rid of about thirty sliders on the KMixer window. Either that or get two more monitors for my PC.

I know enuff to be dangerous.