Yeah I tried them on my main pc which has a real sound card vs. onboard ac97 shit. Similar options there in fedora 19. Pulse is 3.0-10.fc19, pavucontrl 2.0-1.fc19 so a bit old. I'm thinking it's probably the hardware: loose connection somewhere or maybe blown pcb. Or even the speaker is really dead.

That is an old ass version of pulse.

The speaker may or may not be fucked but I'm pretty sure a more recent version of pulse would give you more options. It's only relatively recently that pulse actually started being good. I'm on shitty onboard sound so I don't think that's the issue ... although maybe, I don't know much about how sound works.

 

I don't think there not being 2.1 would be an issue. Analog 2.1 still just uses a standard stereo R/L signal. So you'd hear it through both speakers. Swapping channels of the speakers would tell you if it's a channel issue.

If you can plug in any old spare speaker in its place, I'd give that a go.

Dodgy contacts, joints and leads sounds more likely.

Yeah, I'll have to decide whether this worth repairing, or just wait for another $25 refurb. to come up... I guess it might be worth a $5 + 5-minute gamble.