i have a yamaha sound card, however i can not use it, because i don't know how to enable that, i have check before i can't find any yamaha sound card driver. and now i have to using the oss driver (liboss.so) inside the xmms to play my music and the sound is very bad. can somebody tell me how can i use my sound card. please !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

do a lspci command in the console then lsmod then post back with the output of both commands.

In addition to Boow's comments, be sure to issue those as root or su -. What distro are you running, are you using alsa, is it installed? Have you tried any of your mixers?
good luck.

here is the output of lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host Bridge (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801CAM IDE U100 (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. SuperSavage IX/C SDR (rev 05)
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82801CAM (ICH3) PRO/100 VE (LOM) Ethernet Controller (rev 42)
02:0b.0 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC95 PCI to Cardbus Bridge with ZV Support (rev 32)
02:0b.1 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC95 PCI to Cardbus Bridge with ZV Support (rev 32)
02:0d.0 System peripheral: Toshiba America Info Systems SD TypA Controller (rev 03)

and here is the output of lsmod. by the way i am using redhat9.0 and the kernel version is
2.4.20-8 and my soundcard is yamaha and redhat doesn't detect my soundcard as yamaha.
Module Size Used by Not tainted
nls_cp437 5116 1 (autoclean)
vfat 13004 1 (autoclean)
fat 38808 0 (autoclean) [vfat]
sd_mod 13516 2 (autoclean)
usb-storage 69332 1
i810_audio 27720 1
soundcore 6404 2 [i810_audio]
ac97_codec 13640 0 [i810_audio]
lp 8996 0 (autoclean)
parport 37056 0 (autoclean) [lp]
autofs 13268 0 (autoclean) (unused)
ds 8680 2
yenta_socket 13472 2
pcmcia_core 57216 0 [ds yenta_socket]
e100 60644 1
sg 36524 0 (autoclean)
sr_mod 18136 0 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 12208 0
scsi_mod 107160 5 [sd_mod usb-storage sg sr_mod ide-scsi]
ide-cd 35708 0
cdrom 33728 0 [sr_mod ide-cd]
nls_iso8859-1 3516 2 (autoclean)
ntfs 59008 1 (autoclean)
keybdev 2944 0 (unused)
mousedev 5492 1
hid 22148 0 (unused)
input 5856 0 [keybdev mousedev hid]
usb-uhci 26348 0 (unused)
usbcore 78784 1 [usb-storage hid usb-uhci]
ext3 70784 2
jbd 51892 2 [ext3]

This says you have an intel based card.

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem (rev 02)

It looks like the modules are loaded. Have you tried any of your mixers?
good luck.

i don't know,but i can't find alsa and oss on my computer,futher more i can't install oss on my system(it stop when it say to stop my mixer), and i can still hear sound on my system but sounds very bad. what kinds of mixer do you recommand??

You've probably got kmix, or aumix or both installed. You might also look at the output pluggins of the players you're using.
good luck.

I'd suggest avoiding anything to do with KDE and sound, as my experience has been extremely bad in that department.
I usually stop everything else and use alsaconf, which works with every sound card I've tried it with (on 2.4.x kernels).

Edit: Sorry, and alsamixer for mixing.

The alsa packages are definitely an option, but can sometimes be a pain to configure, depending on the card, the os, and the cofiguration. I'd suggest trying to fix the sound problem first, rather than ditching the configuration.

If the problem can't be resolved from the mixers or some other way, then you might consider looking at alsa.

Some folks have better luck with alsa, some have better luck with the oss modules in the 2.4.x series. YMMV, good luck with whatever option you choose.

i don't have any luck these days, and i looked the a lots of information about sound,and i still can't now fix this problem, and i can't not let the kernel know i am using yamaha sound card not the intel's one. please someone help me while i am don't know what to do??

I have the same card, my advice is once you get it installed don't forget to run

# alsamixer
# amixer set Master 100 unmute
# amixer set PCM 100 unmute
# alsactl store

This wasn't mention on the alsa instructions page

i make up my mind now, i am going to install alsa, but i see in the instrution is said that you have to stop the current driver and the mixer first. how can i stop those programs???

I think I finally understand what you're trying to do. You have an onboard intel card, and you'd like to use the yamaha card in a pci slot yes? If that's the case alsa may be the answer to your problem. You might try turning off the onboard card in the bios. That should stop the modules from loading. If not try adding the modules to /etc/hotplug/blacklist.
good luck.