I'm compiling my first kernel here, the stable 2.4.21 from kernel.org, and all is going well except for sound. I have an ESS Maestro 3i sound card, and accoring to various sources, this card is fully supported in the 2.4.x kernels. When I did menuconfig, I ticked ESS Maestro under the Sound section, but my programs, notably Volume Control in gnome, claim that I either do not have access to /dev/mixer or sound support is not enabled in the kernel. I did a but still I get the same error, which leads me to believe that the kernel does not actually support my card. I noted that the 'ESS Maestro' group that I ticked in menuconfig did not explicitly state it supported ESS Maestro 3i, so I'm not sure if I ticked the right option there, but it seemed like none of the others would do. Is this the right option? And if so, why is my sound not working?

Did
chmod 0666 /dev/dsp*
too?

Other than that: did you compile them
as modules? If so, do they show up in
lsmod? If they are built-in, do you see
the driver mentioned in
dmesg
?

Cheers,
Tink

I built it into the kernel.
And now that I've examined the error more closely, the volume control app is looking for /dev/sound/mixer, which didn't exist. I made a symlink from that to /dev/mixer (is this right) but I still get the same error.
The driver is *not* mentioned in dmesg.

I'm also now experiencing trouble using my previous XF86Config file. I had a modules section that became obosolete, so I took that out, but my USB mouse now fails to work when I tell X it's an IMPS/2 protocol mouse. I don't know if I put support for it into the kernel, because I didn't see anything that looked like IMPS/2. I did, however, install support for USB HID.