[SLUG] Audacity, no mic in sound

[john at johnallsopp.co.uk]

Hi ppl

I've just posted this in the Audacity forum but then noticed it's not
particularly frequently visited so I wondered if we'd be more
effective.

On my own machine I've just installed Audacity 1.3.0-beta (which is
what Yum installed for me) and I'm trying to record from a minidisc
recording. I've got an analogue jack lead from my player headphone
socket to the blue socket (line in, I understand) at the rear of my PC
(I also tried the pink one, mic in (I think)).

Sound is from the AOpen AX4SPE Series motherboard. My Linux is Fedora 3.

My problem is I'm getting no sound in. I can open a wav file and play
it and hear it, no problem. But no mixture of choosing  mic or line,
changing the levels in Audicity or changing things in my ALSA Mixer
capture volume control, nor any combination of unmuting, seems to make
any sound enter the system at all. I can hear sound out of the
minidisc if I plug in headphones.

I haven't re-booted since installing Audacity, nor have I checked the
BIOS in case there's a mic on/off switch there, I can't remember there
being one.

Any ideas what I should try?

Oh, in Audacity preferences I appear to have just one choice for
recording device, /dev/dsp, and I tried clicking 'software
playthrough' as a result of reading the FAQ but that's not the
problem, there's no signal in (whether I could hear it or not), no
waveform is displayed.

All hints and tips welcome.

Cheers
J