Like the subject says...

I was trying to use GnomeMeeting with a friend who has NetMeeting but
we couldn't make it work. (However from within Windows XP, NetMeeting
to NetMeeting would work. So I'm confident my hardware is working.)
At this point I'm only interested in VoIP. So actually if there is
another/better VoIP solution that works with Linux and Windows, I'd
like to hear about it.

In an effort to resolve the problem, I setup my Laptop next to my main
computer (both running Mandrake 9.2 and GnomeMeeting 0.98.5) and I
called my Laptop from my computer (and vice-versa). This was over my
LAN and neither my main computer nor my Laptop were running any kind
of firewalling software. (I'm able to ping back and forth, ssh back
and forth, and I have NFS shares setup in both directions.)

I'm able to connect in either direction with GnomeMeeting but I'm not
getting any audio from either the Laptop or the Desktop. I ran the
Gnome Sound Recorder on both machines and I'm able to record my own
voice to a WAV file and play it back. To me, that would indicate the
Mic is working, the sound card is working, the sound drivers are
working, and so on ... yes?

I do notice, however, that when I bring up the Gnome Volume Control
utility that adjusting the Mic settings seemingly has no affect. At
least when I record my voice into the Gnome Sound Recorder and play it
back, it doesn't matter if the Mic is muted/unmuted or if the Mic
Volume Control Slider is all the way at the top, or all the way at the
bottom. Regardless what setting it's at, the playback from the Gnome
Sound Recorder is always the same level. (So that makes me wonder if
somehow the Mic is only working through some kind of "hardware" mode?
And that certain software is oblivious to it? Or maybe that makes no
sense and is illogical?)

I'll worry about getting GnomeMeeting to work with NetMeeting via the
Internet later. (That will probably have another bunch of "fun"
issues to work out.) I'm assuming that if I can't even get
GnomeMeeting to work with GnomeMeeting over my LAN, then I don't have
a prayer of getting it to work over the Internet with NetMeeting.

Any thoughts? Are there some other audio utilities I can work with to
help me verify that my Mic is working in Linux? Or is the fact that
Gnome Sound Recorder is able to record my voice proof that it is
working? Any help would be appreciated.

If it matters - I'm running Mandrake 9.2, my own Linux 2.4.25 Kernel,
Gnome 2.4.0, XFree86 4.3. My motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
(2.0) and I'm using the integrated nForce2 sound card. (I've
downloaded NVidia's nForce drivers for my sound card but I've never
had any luck making them work *properly* so I'm using the kernel's
sound drivers instead.)

lsmod results

i810_audio 24828 2
soundcore 4068 2 [i810_audio]
ac97_codec 13876 0 [i810_audio]