ALSA loaded, but not playing sound

[Kurt Lieber <debian@kirpatrick.com>]

I've been unable to get alsa working on my Woody installation.  Here's what 
I've done so far:

* installed/compiled alsa-source
* run alsaconf to configure my sound card
* run update-modules to update modules.conf
* cat /proc/interrupts to make sure I don't have an IRQ conflict (I don't)
* looked at an identical machine (Dell Optiplex GX1) to make sure IRQ/DMA, 
etc settings are correct
* lsmod shows that all the drivers are loaded
* /etc/init.d/alsa restart works fine with alsa reporting no errors

In my syslog, I see the following error message:

Oct 10 22:49:09 z3 kernel: Trying to free free IRQ7
Oct 10 22:49:48 z3 kernel: ALSA mpu401_uart.c:401: unable to grab IRQ 7
Oct 10 22:49:48 z3 kernel: ALSA card-cs4236.c:493: CS4236+: MPU401 not 
detected

However, lsmod shows me that snd-mpu401_uart is loaded as a module and cat 
/proc/interrupts shows that it has IRQ 7 all to itself.

If I try to use alsactl to create my asound.conf file, I get the following 
error message:

alsactl: SND CTL open error: Sound protocol is not compatible  

I am completely baffled -- I would really appreciate any insight folks might 
have.

Thanks.

--kurt