OSS sound question: no mixer device
 

I've got OSS sound installed through the binaries from the oss site.
Every time I startup, I get a message something like
intializing /dev/mixer: (settings)not available
Then, I login as root,
type soundoff (forgot why, ) soundon, then it loads the OSS driver again, and
I can play sound.
However,
if I open the Volume Control thing in Multimedia menu under gnome,
"Sorry, no mixer device or elements found"
if I try to record from my line in, nothing happens
I have one of those RIPtide sound cards

# lsmod
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
riptide 68060 0
opl3 12868 0 [riptide]
uart401 7360 0 [riptide]
soundbase 1636736 0 [riptide opl3 uart401]
sndshield 12576 0 [riptide opl3 uart401 soundbase]
nls_cp437 4348 4 (autoclean)

maybe there s something I m missing, I got playback to work using the soudconf util provided by the OSS binary, but I dont see in there how I could "set or initalize" any mixer, device or element.

(Debian Sarge - 2.4.21)

this is strange because, at the same time, aumix works fine, and I can hear the line-in through it.
Could it be Gnome then?

Scrap OSS and use ALSA