[SOLVED] alsa not working

this one is interesting, i've installed debian 6.0.7 on a compaq evo n600c everything works but the sound. alsa apparently cant find the soundcard which is ess allegro 1998, this is where it gets interesting, when i install fedora 11, which is what i first installed on this laptop, everything works, sound included.
so how do i get the sound to work? is there something i need to do manually?

If your sound card does not require non-free firmware, you could look at the Debian wiki's entry for ALSA, http://wiki.debian.org/ALSA, under trouble shooting.
Sorry, but that's about as helpful as I can be.

Thanks for the reply. I've ordered a dvd set online as I'm having more problems than this. So once I get the dvd's I'm gonna reinstall the system and go from there.
*DEAD THREAD*

Check if "user" attached to the "audio" group.

for anybody that has this issue follow the instructions here http://wiki.debian.org/snd-maestro3

i had to reinstall alsa-base alsa-utils and build essentials after doing that and following the intructions in the link everything is working.