Problem with ac-97 sound card.

[Tom and Esther Ward]

Hello, list.
I have recently installed Fedora Core 2, and   am having a rather serious
issue with my sound card. My sound card is a Intel AC-97 sound card, and I
believe the module it requires is the snd-intel8x0 alsa module.
In the past this sound worked fine with older versions of Red Hat like Red
Hat 9 and alsa, but when upgrading to Fedora Core 2 I'm getting absolutely
no sound  at all out of this sound card.
When I did the Fedora setup and it tried to test my sound card it said the
test failed, and it could not find a compatible sound device and went on
it's way. Now, I know from using RH 9 with alsa drivers this card has been
known to work well with Linux using alsa.
Is there any major changes with alsa that breaks compatibility with these
AC-97 sound cards? Where do I go now to try and solve the issue with it. I
have very bad vision so I need the assistance of apps like gnopernicus to
really get work done in Fedora so a sound card is esentual for me.
I'm probably going to grab the kudzu and updated kernel packages, and if
that doesn work what should I do then? Should I just bite the bullet and
download Fedora Core 3 and do a complete install from scratch hoping the
newer version will fix my issues, or does anyone else have a better
solution?
Thanks.