devfs and sound

[Mark Devin <mdevin@ozemail.com.au>]

I am running devfs with devfsd (because I thought it was the way things
were going in the 2.4 kernels).  I can't seem to get my soundcard to
work and I am beginning to think it may be a problem related to devfs
because I don't have the device /dev/sndstat.

I have an ASUSmb with a CMI8738 sound chip on the board.  I have
compiled in support for the drivers for this chip.  They load OK when I
run xmms - here is part of lsmod output:
cmpci                  24592   0  (autoclean)
soundcore               4112   2  (autoclean) [cmpci]

Here is part of my /etc/modules.conf file:
alias char-major-14     cmpci
alias           /dev/sound      cmpci   #C-Media CMI8738 3D
alias           /dev/audio      /dev/sound
alias           /dev/mixer      /dev/sound
alias           /dev/dsp        /dev/sound
alias           /dev/dspW       /dev/sound
alias           /dev/midi       /dev/sound

When I check through my /dev directory, I see that /dev/sndstat is not
there.  Here is all I have:
crw-rw----    1 root     audio     14,   3 Jan  1  1970 /dev/sound/dsp
crw-rw----    1 root     audio     14,   0 Jan  1  1970 /dev/sound/mixer

with /dev/dsp and /dev/mixer being symlinked to the above.

I have already tried doing cat file.au > /dev/dsp, cat file.wav >
/dev/dsp and running aumix to set volumes etc.  All these tests
including xmms seem to run fine - no errors reported but there is
absolutely no sound from my speakers.
Does anyone know how to set up sound with devfs?
Do I need this /dev/sndstat?
Should I ditch devfs?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Mark.