Well I got sound to work , dont know what I was fussing about really.

A pointer for those struggling with sound on a newer distro like mine - i.e. Slackware 10.0.
Firstly if you have a newer distro, you really dont need to do that much with sound config ass fas as I can see.
Iread posts that say to check various things but for me this is all I needed.

Firstly I am using the integrated sound as part of the VIA K8T800 mobo.

Make sure you do a full Slackware install ( all packages) - about ~3GB.
This should insure the kernel has everything it needs.

Boot up and plug a output deivce - speaker / headphones into the output jack - usually the green port on the sound card.

Run this command:
#
Follow the simple directions in 'alsaconf' before you do anything else.
The ALSA people rightly posted that you can help make your soundcard work by altering the '/etc/modules.conf' ('conf.modules' in older systems)
but alsaconf should do this automatically.
If you have a full install, ALSA will be included in the kerrnel. Newer distros will have something like alsa-1.05 or later .. more than sufficient.
Now, run

and turn everything up to the max - even on full, VIA sound is a little tame, mainly because KDE's default mixer is also muted or low.


So next run:
Again you might want to put them all on high before you get discernable loudness. Note: With my setup, 'kmix' sometimes complains that it cannot be run - -this is because it is already running in linux task bar.
Finally:
This SHOULD save your settings. Resart the machine. If you have no sound resart anyway, ALSA might need to initialize this stuff. By the next restart, (if you havnt already) you should here that unmistakable static noise (though maybe at very low volume) towards the end of the boot sequence (very close to X11 load-up) - ALSA starts up late!
Watch out, sound settings aren't always saved by 'alsactl store'. you might want to get friendly with 'alsamixer' and 'kmix' - I now use them all the time to adjust settings.
Hopefully this is a help to some people.