A friend had ubuntu 10.04 running on Sony Vaio CW1BGN. There were two problems that needed to be fixed.
1. The microphone was not working.
2. The webcam was working in applications like cheese but not in skype
Fixing the microphone required the following to be written in /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba-s06
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
(Source: http://www.linux.com/community/forums?func=view&catid=36&id=4504)
Fixing skype video required adding the following lines to ~/.Skype/<skypeusername>/config.xml
<Video>
<AutoSend>1</AutoSend>
<CaptureHeight>480</CaptureHeight>
<CaptureWidth>640</CaptureWidth>
<Fps>32</Fps>
<RecvPolicy>callpolicy</RecvPolicy>
</Video>
Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=968381&page=15
This would have to be done for each skype user who uses skype from the machine/account. That is not very nice. But at least skype video worked. I could not see own preview in the skype video but video was transmitted.
Also, another minor problem remained. Skype crashes when invoked from the Gnome menu and used for video call. On the other hand, when invoked from the terminal, it works fine. Odd behaviour. But having spent several hours trying to fix the machine, I do not have motivation to pursue this further!!
V.
