how to get rid of alsa and return to oss?
 

Using Debian 2.6.8-1-386 standard kernel, everything worked fine until I installed ALSA using apt-get install alsa.
Since then no more sound. Tried to reverse the process with apt-get remove alsa but to no avail.

I guess I should have sticked with OSS, that worked fine. But I read ALSA was better, and I had some sample rate limitations running Pd with OSS.

Now, after ALSA got involved, I get messages during boot that snd_via82xx modprobe failed. Something about IRQ 9 not caught etc. I read many post about similar problems, but no solutions.

I just want to get back to using the working OSS, but how?

I could not get i810 sound working on alsa. I simply recompiled the kernel switching off the alsa stuff and choosing OSS instead. It worked. Though, it was RH9.

Seems that your kernel still thinks it has to use alsa, modules like snd_xxxx are part of alsa. OSS modules look like
...
i810_audio 33040 0
ac97_codec 16896 1 i810_audio
soundcore 7008 1 i810_audio
...

Perhaps you have to reconfigure some packages (kernel?). Unfortunately I have not done it on debian.