Xorg, Alsa, OSS questions

[althalus]

Hi guys,

Recently just started playing with tinycore, and am finding it quite enjoyable. However, I have run into some questions, which don't seem to have answers around here yet.

I have two major questions, the first being with video, the other being with sound.

I have two laptops. On both laptops, the only way I can get the full 1280x800 resolution is to install the full Xorg package, instead of Xvesa.

This causes a couple of other problems that I have not found solutions for yet.

1) On both laptops, ctrl+alt+backspace no longer works. Apparently I need to set "DontZap" to false,

2) On one laptop, the best way to describe it is that the mouse cursor gets corrupted - In some instances the cursor turns into a few green dots, at other times the cursor becomes a square of whatever was below it, or a distotion of. The graphics card is (lspci):
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M]

3) My second question deals with the other laptop and sound. OSS can't find the graphics card at all, whilst alsa will only play sound through the microphone jack, not the speakers. The laptop is a Compaq CQ40, can't be more specific than that right now, don't have that laptop handy. Any pointers on where to start would be welcome.

[bmarkus]

... alsa will only play sound through the microphone jack, not the speakers. ...

Through the microphone jack? Are you sure?

[jls]

on one laptop where I triued tc I had to plug and unplug an earphone in order to ear the sound from the speakers

[bmarkus]

What is about mixer settings?

[curaga]

1) The defaults are decided by the upstream. Send your complaints to the Xorg mailing list Many users disagree with this change, myself included. But it apparently saves lost work when accidentally pressing those keys.
2) An update to the driver may help, as might enabling the SWCursor option

[althalus]

... alsa will only play sound through the microphone jack, not the speakers. ...

Through the microphone jack? Are you sure?

uh...... Typo. *hides* I most definately meant headphone jack, not microphone. Proof reading ftw!

on one laptop where I triued tc I had to plug and unplug an earphone in order to ear the sound from the speakers

Interesting. No luck here i'm afraid.

1) The defaults are decided by the upstream. Send your complaints to the Xorg mailing list  Many users disagree with this change, myself included. But it apparently saves lost work when accidentally pressing those keys.

Funny that... it's a three key combination... that's very hard to accidentally press....

2) An update to the driver may help, as might enabling the SWCursor option

I'm hoping to get by without having to find drivers, if at all possible, and saw SWCursor as a possible solution during my own searching. I actually made another typo (doh) and left a sentence half finished - I don't seem to have an xorg.conf file? Or I just can't find it? There is an xorg.conf.vesa but changes to that don't seem to have any effect.

Edit:
With regard to 3), the sound issue, alsaconf can see two devices:
ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia(Intel HDA)
ATI Technologies Inc RS780 Azalia controller
Doesn't particularly matter which device I use, they both have the same end result.
I can see in the mixer that it has three volume controls - Master, Headphon, Speaker, as well as a few other controls that don't seem to do anything (my ignorance speaking, perhaps.): IEC958, IEC958 D, IEC958 P, Analog L (twice), Digital (Twice).

[curaga]

It's running confless by default. To create a xorg.conf file to put the option in, follow the directions in the Xorg extension info file.

[althalus]

It's running confless by default. To create a xorg.conf file to put the option in, follow the directions in the Xorg extension info file.

Ah. My bad, I failed to read the info for the package closely enough. Hm, the default config it generates gives me a wonderfully useless black screen.  This is going to be fun!

EDIT: Nevermind. Success! the Xorg output said to test it by running X -config /home/tc/xorg.conf.new - This results in a blank screen. Copying the conf to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and then running startx, however, does work. Ctrl + alt + backspace now works. Adding in the SWCursor option to see if that fixes my mouse. Thanks for the help guys.

Which only leaves the other laptops sound. *Ponders*