Powerbook G4 Audio Problems

Well I've just been having a frustrating time with my 1ghz Powerbook G4, which I've only had for a short time. My cheapo iPod dock broke and I've started using the Powerbook instead with the iPod connected via USB. This worked fine for a couple of nights but now audio keeps stuttering and stopping, no matter which music player I've tried. I thought it might be because the iPod is attached to slow USB 1.1 but ruled that out after copying the music to the hard drive. It's not the audio leads or headphones, there must be something wrong with the 'books socket or it's onboard soundcard. Highly annoying, I think I'm going to try Xubuntu PowerPC on it to rule out OSX problems (Download PowerPC 'buntu versions of 10.0.4 here). I have at least rediscovered which players I can still use on OSX. I tried the stable version of Vox, the new version does not work on PowerPC), VLC, and my new favourite, Cog. Cog is very lightweight, probably the lightest of them all and has better music management than Vox. I'm now using my older 667Mhz Powerbook for music for the time being.