Help with Musix distro on Compaq laptop?

Would anyone be willing to help me get the Musix distro to work on a Compaq Evo N115 laptop? I can post the nitty gritty if someone indicates that might help, but basically, I have a SoundMAX sound card, an AMD processor, and around 300MB of RAM.

The problem I'm currently having is that I can't get sound of any kind. An error message pops up the instant I press the play button on xmms. Previously, I've tried Ubuntu Dapper, the Studio to go! demo, and Dyne:bolic distros on this machine, and those all detected all my hardware automagically and did basic sound stuff ok, so I don't really know where to start.
(The reason I decided to not use those distros is because I can't seem to get rid of insurmountable xruns in JACK with Ubuntu, Studio To Go! is not free, and Dyne seems to have some problem with my wireless card I can't get past.)

Thank you in advance for your help! Let me know if more info would be helpful from me.

What is the error message?

I should have tried this before, but I just figured out that it works when I boot withOUT my midi cable plugged in.

Now I don't see how to get it to recognize the midi cable after I've started up and I plug it in. When I plugged it in, it sounded like the hard drive was accessed, but I didn't see it show up in Jack's connection window.

Thanks!

Also, I'd like to set it up so I don't have to unplug and re-plug the midi cable every time I boot.

(I will probably install this on my hard drive soon, so assume that's done.)

I am not sure how to help on this one as I have 0 experience with midi cables.
You could try installing it to the hard drive, if it doesn't work you can just reinstall the previous distro that worked with your wireless.