HP 250 G5 i3 laptop's internal mic not accessible (Solved)

[ozsouth]

With the possibility of 'Skype Doctor Consults' I tried to use Skype for Web, finding that Chrome works best in ScPup64 (various) - also tried Bionicpup64-8.0.
However, I found that my HP 250 G5 i3 laptop's internal mic is only visible to a 4.x kernel, and no 5.x ones. Unsuccessfully scoured DOTconfigs for clues. Net searches show my kit has issues & I already select hw:1 (analog card). I also have a PC with ath10k (QCA9377) wifi, needing a 5.x kernel, so simply using 4.x is not a solution. Sound is via Realtek ALC3227 & output of lspci | grep Audio is:
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Audio Controller (rev 09)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller (rev 03)

Any suggestions?

[ozsouth]

More testing shows mic working in recent firefox esr for all pups/kernels/machines tested (several of each), but with chrome (v76, 78, 80) only works in pups over 1 year old, regardless of kernel. Had used 4.14 & 4.19 kernels with older pups in successful trials, leading to wrong conclusion.
Firefox allows me to use talky.io , but not skype web. I have a frugal ScPup64-19.01 with my 5.4.8 kernel set up for skype web via chrome v80, as a 'doofer' now.

[rcrsn51]

Try starting the Chrome browser with the "--no-sandbox" option.

[ozsouth]

@rcrsn51 - thanks for suggestion - no luck.
Tried using ScPup64-19.04 (k4.14.159) & then LxPupSc64-19.09 (k5.2.11).
In /home/spot ran ./chrome.sh --no-sandbox , then cd google & ran ./chrome --no-sandbox .
Then copied google folder into /opt & tried latter again.
'no microphones found' (webcam & speakers always work).
Same setup works in bionicpup64-8.0, slacko64-6.9.9.9 & ScPup64-19.01, regardless of kernel used.
Perhaps if I could open the delta btween ScPup64-19.01 & 19.04, might see what changed.

[ozsouth]

Problem is zoom & skype want a modern pulseaudio libs (v7+ is fine - I used v9), whereas libs used for apulse are quite old & talky.io wants old - even v5 is too new. Only way to get this to work is to have both - old version in usr/lib64/apulse (not symlinks from /usr/lib64); new in /usr/lib64 with no symlinks. They don't seem to fight each other & everything now works in any ScPup64.
Attached is a .pet that institutes this in ScPup64 (use at own risk).