Two problems: Sound distortion and Video Corruption

[mnemone]

Hi, I am having a pair of problems here:


NVidia ti4200 video card:

- 'nv' driver
+ seems to work fine

- 'nvidia' driver
+ 2d seems fine,
+ glxgears crashes hard:
-- can't switch to another terminal (ctrl-alt-n)
-- video gets corrupted: blocky distortion (random bits shifted about)
-- if I kill X from ssh|vnc the screen goes white with vertical black stripes and starts blinking


Ensoniq AudioPCI 5580 (ens1371)

- artsd crashes on startup (from KDE control center)
- from console:

wday@abelated wday $ artsd
unix_connect: can't connect to server (unix:/tmp/mcop-wday/abelated-1a16-41fc6a27)
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can't be opened for playback (Device or resource busy)

- xmms sort of works (listening right now)
+ hdd activity induces skipping and squeeling (screeching?)
+ HDD dma is on (by hdparm)
+ Music is slightly distorted (overdriven)


- alsa is the in kernel driver
+ I have used the kernel drivers since 2.4.18 with this sound card without problem

Any help would be much appreciated.