I have been at this for some time and I think the soundcard might be broken. Would like a second opinion tho.

lspci says:
Multimedia audio controller: ESS Technology ES1978 Maestro 2E (rev 10)

alsaconf detects the card and says "OK, sound driver is configured. will prepare the card for playing now"
but then
"amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such device
save_state:1163: No soundcards found..."
Every thing I try says somthing simmilar, no soundcard.

kernel was compiled with the correct module.

Doing cat /proc/interrupts it dont seem like the card is given any irq

Infact lspci is the only thing that sees the card.

I'v tryed getting it to work in debian stable and testing with kernel 2.4 and 2.6.

I'm a bit new at linux so sorry if my info is a little useless. Anyone else think it's broken?