Actually, I did eventually build from the sources, and I knew about the sound being muted.... so I unmuted the PCM and Master settings and raised the volume, only to discover much later a setting that disabled my amp. Ooops. Anyway, I put those lines in there, but that didn't quite do the trick for autoloading.... I'd like to use the 'alsasound' script to activate/deactiate ALSA, but I don't know how to run it automatically. Do you?

Thanks for the reply.

As they say: Use the Source, Luke!

Ah! (he says... kicking himself.)

Look in /etc/rc.d/init.d. You should see the alsasound script. Yes? No? If not, put a copy of the script (from the driver build source tree under the ``utils'' subdirectory) in /etc/rc.d/init.d. Then, run

chkconfig --level 3 alsasound on

or

chkconfig --levels 35 alsasound on

That will run the script whenever you enter run levels that were specified on the chkconfig command line.

Hope this helps...

Rick