Sound woes...
As lspci shows - this laptop contains ATI SB450 HDA Audio. You can read here about setting up alsa in Gentoo Linux. I used kernel driver "Intel HD Audio" (2.6.17-gentoo-r8 kernel), it works but with some problems. First - dmesg shows me repeating error "hda_codec: invalid dep_range_val 0:7fff". Second - I noticed that no sound is playing complitely, seems that PCM volume was at 0 but there was no PCM in alsamixer! What's a ... After playing some with kernel config in sound section, launching 'alsaconf' and exploring /etc/asound.state - it shows me PCM volume in alsamixer (in kmix also). Sound appeared and works well ... until I rebooted system. After reboot - it was unable to start alsamixer with error: "alsamixer: function snd_mixer_load failed: Invalid argument", kmix starts - but again PCM volume (and more) disappeared in it. But now sound was playable, although some programs (mplayer) shows errors about mixer. Now I only find a temporary solution to fix it - to remove /etc/asound.state file and launch either "/etc/init.d/alsasound restart" or "alsaconf" again - then it works normally ... till next reboot.
Another problem - when using oss as a sound driver - in some applications sound played with a wrong (very high) pitch.
Update 30-Sep-2006: Removed kernel module and emerged alsa-driver-1.0.12, high-pitch problem disappeared but mixer problem still exists.
ondago ~ # alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_mixer_load failed: Invalid argument
ondago ~ # amixer
amixer: Mixer default load error: Invalid argument
ehart@ondago ~ $ amixer
amixer: Mixer default load error: Invalid argument
ehart@ondago ~ $ alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_mixer_load failed: Invalid argument
ondago ~ # /etc/init.d/alsasound restart
* Caching service dependencies ... [ ok ]
* Storing ALSA Mixer Levels ...
/usr/sbin/alsactl: get_control:209: Cannot read control info '2,0,0,Capture Volume,1': Invalid argument [ !! ]
* Unloading ALSA ... [ ok ]
* Unloading ALSA modules ... [ ok ]
* Loading ALSA modules ... [ ok ]
* Restoring Mixer Levels ...
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #11 (Invalid argument)
* Errors while restoring defaults, ignoring [ ok ]