I can't use my mic

From: Carl (no_spam_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 09/28/03 

Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 00:11:28 GMT

Hi, I have installed alsa soundcard driver. I have redhat9, and I
installed alsa driver for my VIA sound chip. I can use it to listen to
music, but never succeed to be able to record my voice, or talk with
somebody over the internet. I think that my mic configuration is not set
up right. I tried to get informations about how to use 'amixer' to use a
mic, however, I could not do it so far. I tried 'google' for any
previous postings, but I could not find anything that was helpful for me.
  Could anybody help me?