I finally learned what was causing the chipmunk audio problem with BF1942 and the Inspiron8500 (and all Sigmatel based laptops I assume), and how to fix it! It turns out the porblem is related to sounds in the game that were sampled at the incorrect rate.

It took a while to check and fix all the wav files, but I'm now enjoying BF1942 on my i8500 with totally normal samples! wooohooo!

You can see the full description and how to fix it here:

http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/desertcombat/topic.asp?fid=6547&tid=1170144