Oh yes... @#$%^&*!!

After going through 384,113 postings here I still don't get it...

I have Sarge, 2.6.8-2-386 kernel, ASUS P5GD2-X muthaboard.

"lspci" finds
0000:00:1b.0 0403: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)

"lsmod" shows no sound modules and I get the Messages From Hell, "/dev/dsp can't be opened" with OSS and "device default can't be opened" with Alsa.

I don't see any evil messages from "modprobe" in /var/log/whatever...

AlsaConf of course can't find anything, not even its own shoelaces...

"discover -debug" shows (interestingly)
Found Intel Corporation I/O Controller Hub Audio (Unknown)
(thanks a lot)

The Alsa stuff seems to be all installed... at least, /etc/alsa/dev.d/alsa-base and /etc/alsa/modprobe-post-install.d/alsa-base and /etc/modultils/alsa-base exist... I *thought* I got everything installed... /etc/modules.conf has all sorts of references to "snd", stuff in it even though nothing's getting loaded...

What I think is happening is my Debian is too old for my hardware (although that Intel chipset has been around for quite a while)??

What I think is *supposed* to happen is that "discover" or "hotplug" or Something is supposed to find the sound card and load the driver for it at boot and then somehow Alsa is supposed to detect that the driver got loaded and load itself and we all live happily ever after. AM I right about that? I've just pieced that much together from reading 184,866 manual snippets and 818,666 web pages.

Is all this documented *anywhere* that i can just go read up on it? So far I can't find it... I'm sure it's right here under my nose, but I can't find it...

Assuming i'm right about all the above, it seems to me I should be able to just fool ONE idiot-stick utility - like "discover", or whatever - into loading a usable driver (I'm guessing it's probably "snd-intel8x0" - ?) and then everything else should just sort of wake up and start working... yes, no?

I didn't see any sign of a new driver for the Intel chipset anywhere, and even if I find one and get it compiled, thus far I can'f figure out from the documentation, what is now the "correct" way to modify the driver load configuration in "Sarge"... evidently "update-modules" is deprecated, and there's a message in /etc/modules.conf that says DON'T MODIFY THIS FILE!!! Can I just stick the driver (snd-intel8x0 or whatever0 in /etc/modules?

What does it take to get AlsaConf to recognize "something" so that it will go off and finish installing itself and hopefully create /dev/dsp and /dev/audio and etc... ??

I suppose I'd use OSS sound if it worked... haven't invested a lot in that, since the last Debian I brought up (Woody) couldn't access my sound with OSS no matter what...

Ideas welcome...