I have an Asus A7V8X-X MB with onboard VIA AC97 sound.
Even after trying the Alsa argument at boot (I'm running the live CD) I get no sound (in control center it says "device can't be opened for playback"). I can't check my mixer settings, since kmix has no sliders in the gui (in the shell, when I run kmix I get a slew of error messages). Alsa-autoconfig runs with no errors, but makes no difference. And sndconfig finds the AC97 card but says it's not supported.

And just to give you an idea of how linux-illiterate I am, I don't even know how to view my lspci -v output in a way that will allow me to paste it into this post (so if you think it'll help, tell me how, please)...

Thanks in advance...

Edit: here's my lspci -v, finally:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8377 [KT400/KT600 AGP] HostBridge
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X motherboard
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0
Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 PCI Bridge (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0
Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
Memory behind bridge: d6000000-d7efffff
Prefetchable memory behind bridge: d7f00000-dfffffff
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
I/O ports at d800 [size=32]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
I/O ports at d400 [size=32]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
I/O ports at d000 [size=32]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard rev 1.01
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
Memory at d5800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard
Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 0
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard rev. 1.01
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 255
I/O ports at b800 [size=16]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X Motherboard
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 22
I/O ports at e000 [size=256]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 74)
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X Motherboard
Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 23
I/O ports at b400 [size=256]
Memory at d5000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: Gateway 2000: Unknown device 3019
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
Memory at d6000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
Expansion ROM at d7fe0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <available only to root>