Hi Hendrik

Thanks I fixed the screen dim thing but still have problem with the
sound here is the output in dmesg:


nm256: no ac97 is found!
force the driver to load by passing in the module parameter
force_ac97=1
or try sb16 or cs423x drivers instead.

this is what it says when I try loading the alsamixer:

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
> "danielmaxson" <daniel.maxson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well I installed Slackware 10.2 on a Dell Inspiron 3500 and have a few
> > problems.
>
> Are you using the default 2.4 kernel or the test 2.6 kernel?
>
> > First: If I start X and then switch runlevels them my screen dims.
>
> Switching to another runlevel should probably kill the X process. Reasons
> to switch to another run level is to shutdown the computer, reboot the
> computer or startup the computer.
>
> Which runlevel do you switch to when the screen dims and what do you mean
> by "dims"? Does the screen get completely black?
>
> > Second: my computer came with a lucent winmodem and I would like to get
> > that to work on Slackware.
>
> If you are lucky the information at http://www.linmodems.org/ might help
> you.
>
> > Third: my sound card(Neomagic 256) does not work even though I ran
> > alsaconf and installed it.
>
> Did you unmute the card in the mixer settings? The term "does not work" is
> not very descriptive. Please try to elaborate what does not work as
> expected and what you have tried to do to make it work.
>
>
> > Also when my computer starts up it usually spends a long time at
> > "starting hotplug activation"? or something like that. I was wondering
> > what that was useful for and if someone could tell me how to make it not
> > boot with hotplug....
>
> To boot without hotplug you could do "chmod a-x /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug".
> However, hotplug is rather useful as it is responsible for detecting the
> hardware in the computer and load kernel modules (drivers) for the
> hardware it finds. It detects hardware both during bootup and hardware
> that is later hotplugged into your machine like USB devices.
>
> If you disable hotplug you will have to manually make sure that all
> modules for hardware is loaded in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules. If you don't load
> the modules things like network- and sound-cards will not work.
>
> I can't say for sure, but to me it seems as if hotplug gets a lot slower
> with a 2.6 kernel.
>
> One more piece of advice... There are spambots which search the net for
> email addresses to send spam to. Placing an email address on a web page or
> somewhere else on the net where it is easy to find will most likely result
> in that you get a lot of spam to that address. When posting to usenet news
> it would be wise not to use a good email address as the sender.
>
> regards Henrik
> --
> The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
> hc8(at)uthyres.com Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
> root@variousus.net root@localhost