I am trying to get my SB AWE64 PnP card working on
Debian Sarge. I'd even like to get MIDI working on
it. I am using kernel 2.6.8. My card seems to be
detected at boot time, as evidenced by dmesg:

...
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
pnp: SB audio device quirk - increasing port range
pnp: AWE32 quirk - adding two ports
isapnp: Card 'Creative SB AWE64 PnP'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total
...

But (as root as you can see):

localhost:~# modprobe snd_sbawe
FATAL: Error inserting snd_sbawe (/lib/modules/2.6.8-2-686/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sbawe.ko): No such device
FATAL: Error running install command for snd_sbawe
localhost:~#

What gives? What does 'No such device' mean? How do I set up my
card correctly? I have seen the alsa home page but a lot of it seems
to be written with the assumption that you're working with a 2.4 kernel
instead of 2.6, and I don't know how much of it will work differently.

Thanx

Have you installed the alsa-base, alsa-utils and alsa-oss packages it seems like you have not done this. When prompted during the setup choose your card from the list presented if necessary run the alsamixer as normal user to raise/unmute the Master and PCM channels. For the midi you need the packages awesfx, aumix and pmidi then once installed use sfxload sound_font.SF2 to test pmidi -p 65:0 file_in_sound_font_loaded.mid should do it or at least this is what I have in my notes from last year.

I did have the three packages, alsa-base, alsa-utils, and alsa-oss loaded.
I completely removed them, and then reinstalled them. When running alsaconf
(as root) it tells me that 'no supported PnP or PCI card found.'

I opt to check out ISA cards. I get an 'ok' from alsaconf.

Still the same error (as root):

localhost:~# modprobe snd_sbawe
FATAL: Error inserting snd_sbawe (/lib/modules/2.6.8-2-686/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sbawe.ko): No such device
FATAL: Error running install command for snd_sbawe