Sound dead on A20m: options?

[bobclark86]

Hi, all. I have an A20m I picked out of the trash (with another old Thinkpad that's 100 %), but the A20m doesn't have sound. I've tried installing drivers on Windows 2000 and Windows 98SE, but no dice. I think it's dead, Jim. No beep on boot, no sound in Windows, no sound through the headphone or line out jacks.

I just wanna play my Windows 95/98 games with their glorious .wav sound, lol.

I've seen USB sound cards that claim to support Windows 98SE. Would something like that hooked to an external speaker work, or am I better off hunting down a PCMCIA sound card? I really don't want to spend infinity more on a new motherboard for this, so I'm looking for other (cheap) options.

[Thinkpad4by3]

Does the machine recognise that a sound card is in the machine? Sound cards RARELY ever die. I've only heard of one dying and it was in a server doubling as a dust bunny storage unit.

Sent from my E6553 using Tapatalk

[bobclark86]

Yup. Says there's a sound chip. Says the drivers are working properly. Tried on Windows 98se and 2000 Pro with all the drivers I could find. Nothing.

[ajkula66]

Sound cards RARELY ever die. I've only heard of one dying and it was in a server doubling as a dust bunny storage unit.

A sound card going south was not uncommon on A3x series, but I haven't personally experienced the same issue on an A2x.

Given the description of no sound coming out of the system under any circumstances, I'd have to go with a card gone bad as my diagnosis.