CD-ROM "mplayer" saga continues

[W. Nick Dotson]

While I've been able to make lot of Linux progress with keyboard on stomach laying down with Mr. Flu; I have one as yet unresolved problem.  The only way I 
could get "mplayer" to acknowledge the existence of my CD-ROM drive with an audio CD inside was, "mplayer /dev/cdrom".  It grumbled about expecting 
some output code and getting another a couple of times, after having hit the drive and acknowledged it, then all speech stopped, the keyboard went dead, and 
I had to use the reset button, one time the computer emmitted a continuous beep.

And, as usual, Janina was directly on target, despite the less than comfortable amount of labels and stuff I'm used to in Windows audio stuff, I did get the mixer 
to do my bidding, but when the computer reboots, neither it,nor my speech settings stick.  Maybe the former is a function of the crash, but I do sort of remember 
something about the speech stuff encountered by someone else earlier...

Nick