[Alsa-user] ALSA support for old ISA card?

[Landis M. <b3z...@gm...>]

Hello, all,

I'm working with an older transitional motherboard with a Pentium III
processor and that, believe it or not, has two ISA ports and one of them is
occupied by the soundcard (this is a non-profit organization-- a church on
tight budget-- and thus the older equipment).  I loaded Debian 5,
2.6.26-1-686 kernel, Gnome Display Environment, and the printer, display
adapter, and NIC are supported just fine.  My last challenge is enabling the
soundcard.

ALSACONF recognizes the soundcard as "SBAWE Creative SB AWE64 PnP" and
completes its work without errors.  However, when I try the generic Gnome
volume control, it results in the error message "volume ctrl=no volume
control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found".Command ALSAMIXER results in
the error message "function snd_ctl_open failed for default:  no such
device".

I found a post in the archives about this card, but the post is five years
old and I think it's obsolete.  Any tips on getting ALSA to support this ISA
card, or do you think I should just suggest my client get a PCI sound card
(several PCI expansion slots are available)?  Because the church is on a
budget, I really would like to get the ISA card working, to spare any
expense.

Any tips or assistance would be appreciated.  If you need some output from
DMESG, just let me know.

Thanks from North-Central California, USA,

Landis