sound card/fedora3/

[mike]

hi,

using fedora core 3 on a compaq laptop.
sound card works great but only one application can use it at once.
i've noticed this happening in the following scenario:

realplayer is streaming and i receive a message on gaim.

gaim gives the error 'sound will be send to the null device'

i dont' have the exact error but if it's necessary let me know.

basically gaim works fine when it's the only when using the sound card.
ran some tests and basically one ONE application can use the sound card 
at a time, whichever one used it first hogs the card and no other app 
can use it.

any suggestions?

mike h