I am also left with a mute laptop, a HP 6100 with ESS Technology ES1988 Allegro-1 (rev 12) sound chip. Matěj Laitl seems to be spot in his post since in I found this in Debian kernel changelog :
linux-2.6 (2.6.23-1) unstable; urgency=low ... * Remove binary only firmwares for: ... - ESS Allegro/Maestro3 ... While I understand and support the whole "up yours, binary only firmwares" view, I also do like having sound. Is there any chance of getting the needed firmware in kernel or as a module in Debian. Package alsa-firmware-loaders doesn't seem to handle a module for these chips. Cheerio, Mikko Nurminen
