[lug] OSS (Remember that?)

[Dhruva B. Reddy]

I have an ancient Toshiba laptop (a 2515CDS) on which I just installed
Debian 3.0 (I'm trying to turn it into a media player for the living room).
I selected the 2.6 kernel (Debian stable comes with 2.6.8), as the
installer froze on HW detection with the default kernel.

The installer found the sound card OK, but it used the OSS opl2sa3
driver.  It works, but volume at which it plays is very low.  I've
fixed this in the past by installing aumix.  I tried that this time, but
when I try to run it, it exits with an exit code of 1 and the following
message:

 aumix:  SOUND_MIXER_READ_DEVMASK

Which turns out to be a macro in /usr/include/linux/soundcard.h.  I
wrote a program that spits out the value of this and got the following:

SOUND_MIXER_READ_DEVMASK: -2147201538

Before I remembered aumix, I tried (unsuccessfully, but not very hard) to
install the ALSA drivers.

So I have a couple of questions at this point:

	* I realize OSS is deprecated, but it seems to support my
	  ancient ISA sound card with lot less hassle than ALSA.  Is there a
	  better way to make my card work well?
	* If aumix is still the way to go, can anyone tell me what might
	  be happening when I try to run it?

Thanks,
Dhruva
-- 
Sacred cows make great steaks.