I installed slack 10, sound worked fine

compiled 2.6.7, sound worked fine

recompiled to include printer support, sound died, but lived on 2.4 kernel boot.

Uninstalled and reinstalled ALSA packages from CD, sound died on both kernels, and ALSA scripts no longer worked

I figure it has something to do with an ALSA utils package I missed somehow, but I could really use some help: I'm confident the kernel is set up right, I just have no scripts to install with.

running an ISA soundblaster 16, could someone pls post some helpfull advice, preferrably in slow, helpfull steps?

compile alsa from sources....

how? and less imporantly, why?

Just rm /etc/asound.state (which contains alsamixer parameters but may be corrupted or incompatible with 2.6.7 kernel)

I used to do this nearly after each kernel compile, not need to reinstall or compile alsa.

shouldn't I then have to take action to rebuild that?

Yes, restart alsa and do alsaconf(as root), alsamixer, alsactl store(as root)

removed the file, ok, but I get nothing trying to run those commands as root. If I go into the folders where I unzipped the downloaded files, I can perl variations on those commands, but Alsaconf fails, whining for a missing snd module, and KDE whines at boot for a missing /dev/dsp

What is your output for :

cat /usr/src/linux-2.6.7/.config | grep -i "snd.*="

Config snd=y
snd timer =y
snd pcm=y
snd hwdep=y
snd rawmid=y
snd sequencer=y
snd ossemul=y
snd mixer oss=y
snd pcm oss=y
snd sequencer oss=y
snd mpu401 uart=y
snd opl3_lib=y
snd dummy=m
snd virmidi=m
snd mpu401=m
snd sb8=y
snd sb16=y
snd sbawe=y
snd sb16 csp=y

Droped the 'config and underscores, but usefull data is there

You have enabled good modules but for alsa to work fine I would consider enable as module (not as built-in) all these audio features that can be compiled as module.

I'll get started on that, can you walk me through ALSA install for after I'm done?

Nothing hard, I assume you have the latest alsa packages installed (alsa-driver, alsa-lib, alsa-oss, alsa-utils). Just do alsaconfig (as root), alsamixer (as user), alsactl store (as root)

actually, I'm not certain that i DO have the alsa packages installed, and those scripts don't respond to root. how do I install them in a way linux will like?

It is the first time that you install slackware packages ? It is easy, download the needed packages then install them with installpkg package_name (as root)
or use swaret or slackpkg tool to download and install them automatically.

To see if package is installed, just look at the /var/log/packages directory.

is a "package" a single zip, or are there extra files to interpret zip file extraction places?