How to make audio work on old laptop?

I'm trying to make a working install of Ubuntu 14.04 on a Toshiba Satellite U200. Ubuntu is running pretty well, except there is absolutely no audio.

I have already followed all the advice in the Sound troubleshooting page, and the results were:

• I checked the audio settings tons of times: it is not muted, and the volume is at 100%. I can see the indicator on the panel and it seems active and not muted.

• The sink is listed if I use pacmd and the list-sinks command. However the output is the following:

  $ pacmd
  Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information.
  >>> list-sinks
  1 sink(s) available.
    * index: 0
      name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo>
      driver: <module-alsa-card.c>
      flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY DYNAMIC_LATENCY
      state: SUSPENDED
      suspend cause: IDLE 
      priority: 9959
      volume: 0: 153% 1: 153%
              0: 11,00 dB 1: 11,00 dB
              balance 0,00
      base volume:  89%
                   -3,00 dB
      volume steps: 65537
      muted: no
      current latency: 0,00 ms
      max request: 0 KiB
      max rewind: 0 KiB
      [...]
      used by: 0
      linked by: 0
      configured latency: 0,00 ms; range is 0,50 .. 341,33 ms
      card: 0 <alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1b.0>
      module: 5
      properties:
          [...]
          alsa.name = "AD1981 Analog"
          alsa.id = "AD1981 Analog"
          [...]
          alsa.long_card_name = "HDA Intel at 0x44080000 irq 43"
          alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
          device.bus_path = "pci-0000:00:1b.0"
          sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0"
          device.bus = "pci"
          device.vendor.id = "8086"
          device.vendor.name = "Intel Corporation"
          device.product.id = "27d8"
          device.product.name = "NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller"
          [...]
          module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
          device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
      ports:
          analog-output-speaker: Altoparlanti (priority 10000, latency offset 0 usec, available: unknown)
              properties:
                  device.icon_name = "audio-speakers"
          analog-output-headphones: Cuffie analogiche (priority 9000, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
              properties:
                  device.icon_name = "audio-headphones"
      active port: <analog-output-speaker>
  

  I don't really like the state: SUSPENDED, nor the used by: 0, linked by: 0 and, at the end, available: unknown, however I'm not really sure what all this output means.

• When playing the test sounds I don't hear anything, even when using sudo. The user wasn't in the audio group, I have added the user to the group and nothing changed.

• I tried to log in the guest session, but the audio doesn't work either.
• The sound card is recognize by Ubuntu and aplay -l does show it.
• find /lib/modules/uname -r| grep snd does find tons of modules, so the drivers seem to be there.

• Output of lspci:

  $ lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio"
  00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
      Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device 0001
      Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43
      Memory at 44080000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
      Capabilities: <access denied>
      Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
  $ sudo lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio"
  00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
      Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device 0001
      Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43
      Memory at 44080000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
      Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
      Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
      Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
      Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
  

• I don't understand whether the sound card is supported. I can see ICH7 in the Intel list, but I cannot find NM10/ICH7. Also it seems like ICH7 devices use the snd-intel8x0 driver, which I have:

  $ find /lib/modules/`uname -r` | grep snd-intel8x0
  /lib/modules/3.13.0-24-generic/kernel/sound/pci/snd-intel8x0.ko
  /lib/modules/3.13.0-24-generic/kernel/sound/pci/snd-intel8x0m.ko
  

Does somebody know how to fix this issue?

On this page it is me tioned that on some toshiba laptops not muting headphones may sometimes automatically mute the master volume. I have tried a lot of combinations of mute/unmute the various channels but nothing worked.

Later on the same page suggest doing:

$ sudo iecset audio on

And I get the following response:

control "IEC958 Playback Default" (index -1) not found

I don't whether this might be useful, but the internal microphone works perfectly. I can record sound but I'm unable to play it.

I just noticed that when doing alsa force-reload, it says that it fails to unload some modules:

$ sudo alsa force-reload
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-hda-codec-si3054 snd-hda-codec-analog snd-hda-intel snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm snd-page-alloc snd-timer (failed: modules still loaded: snd-hda-codec-si3054 snd-hda-codec-analog snd-hda-intel snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm snd-page-alloc snd-timer).
Loading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-hda-codec-si3054 snd-hda-codec-analog snd-hda-intel snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm snd-page-alloc snd-timer.
$ echo $?
1