[quote="Ed Howdershelt"]It's a Toshiba Satellite U305-S5097, made around 2007, yet the latest top Linux distros seem unable to make the sound card work.
Google hasn't turned up much that's useful.
I'd prefer to run it with Puppy Linux or Mint, but above all, I'd prefer to run it without Windows.
Any ideas?
Ed[/quote]
I happened to discover that the bios was changing its settings for no apparent reason and looked into that. Apparently there have been a couple of bios updates since the lappie's debut.
I haven't seen this kind of problem since I messed with the Columbia PC-XT back in 1983. Had to periodically tell their bios to restore defaults.
So I tried that and suddenly I had sound again.
The sound lasted through three boots, then went out. I checked the bios and found it had again changed itself.
I would have had to install XP to use the downloadable bios updates and they didn't seem to address either unwanted changes or sound.
SO... I sold the lappie to a local tech who seemed to think the bios issue was a non-issue.
He rather confidently installed Win7 on it, played some tunes, and called the problem fixed.
I told him to reboot it a few times just to be sure. He did so.
The sound went out after boot #3.
Resetting the bios defaults brought it back.
He downloaded the bios updates and ran them, then rebooted. The sound was out again.
Resetting the bios brought it back.
Rather than say 'Toldja so,' I said goodbye.
Too bad. It had a nice screen and it was fairly quick, but I like having my tunes playing while I work.
Anyway, thanks for all the help and suggestions here.
Ed
Ed Howdershelt - Abintra Press
Science Fiction & Semi-Fiction
http://www.AbintraPress.com