Sound card problems

[scpeckham]

I am fairly new to Linux ... I am running Debian Sarge, and am not getting sound
on one of my machines (an old PII 233Mhz 192MB Dell). I tryed disabling the
motherboard sound, and put in a Sound Blaster ISA PNP card... still no luck.
I am not sure what if any of this is relevent ... (perhaps someone could tell me what to look for?) but the syslog shows
isapnp: scanninig fo pnp cards...
pnp: SB audio device quirk - increasing port range.
isapnp: Card Creative ViBRA16C pnp
pciehp:acpi_pciehprm: get_device pci root hid fail=0x1001
shpchp:acpi_shpchprm: get_device pci root hid fail=0x1001
pnp: Device 01:01.01 activated.
gameport:ns558 pnp at pnp 01:01.01 io 200 size 8 speed 693khz

I also noticed there is no device /dev/dsp

Any suggestions (I am even willing to get a new sound card, if I must)?
The motherboard supports both PCI and ISA bus.

[scpeckham]

I have been trying to figure this out ... and this is what I have found out so far ...

With the original sound card there was a /dev/dspW device, which after a bit of
looking around is a 16bit sound card interface (unfortunately there was no 8 bit
interface, which is what most software uses, hence my original problem).
That interface went away when I disabled it,
but the software is appearently still looking for the old soundcard,
and ignoring the "new" soundcard.

So the question becomes ...
Can I get my Debian Sarge Linux to recognize that the old soundcard is gone,
and the new one exists, or must I reinstall Linux?

Thanks,
Steven.

[scpeckham]

Reinstalled linux sarge with 2.6 kernal ... no luck at all .... still no /dev/dsp devices.
Reinstalled Debian Sarge (again) this time with the 2.4 kernal ... still no sound,
but have lots of /dev/dsp and /dev/audio devices.
Even though /dev/dsp shows up with the ls command, esd claims
" /dev/dsp: No such device"
anyone know what I should try (or look at) next???
Thanks,
Steven.

[scpeckham]

I ran ALSACONF and sound works ... until I reboot.
I installed alsa-base alsa-utils and alsa-modules... ran alsaconf, then sound worked
(mostly ... the parts that use alsa anyway) on Debian Sarge (linux 2.4).
So I went back and installed Debian Sarge (linux 2.6), then alsa-base and alsa-utils.
I ran alsaconf and sound works very well indeed ... until I shutdown ... so I have
to run alsaconf everytime I boot.
Does anyone know how to make the changes permanent.
Thanks,
Steven.

[scpeckham]

I have sound!!! I added my sound driver snd-????,
where ???? was the sound driver selected by ALSACONF,
to /etc/modules