ALSA broken with latest updates

[HangFire]

After 2 reinstalls and 3 removals of PulseAudio, I finally got my laptop microphone to work (and stay working) with LMDE/Gnome 3 weeks ago. Whether it worked or not seemed to depend on the order of install, configure versus update.

October 8th I installed a major update pack and now I have no sound output. But, my microphone still works. I'm till using ALSA.

Given my past history, I'm 99.9% sure this is a s/w update problem. Does anyone know of a quick fix for ALSA on the Asus G1s-x1?

Thanks!

[HangFire]

I'm now on Mint 14 with this system, and still have to bring up the mixer and change output from "Headphones" to "Speakers" to get any audio (even if I'm really using Headphones!)

HF