playing midi's

[Boudewijn <vd.drift@hccnet.nl>]

Hi,

I would like to play midi's via the soundcard of my laptop under 
Debian/Sarge.

The soundcard is an Intel 82801BA(M) ICH2 - AC'97 Audio Controller [B-5]
The system plays .wav, .ogg and mp3 fine under linux/OSS, never tried 
ALSA.  
The system plays midi's under Windows XP.
I assume XP uses software drivers, I see:
midi-out.0 Microsoft GS Wavetable-software
wave-out.0 Intel(r) Integrated Audio

Playmidi seems to shed some light on what is happening:

ijbd@fuji:~/documents/System/internet/midi$ su
Password:
root@fuji:/home/ijbd/documents/System/internet/midi# playmidi -f -v art.mid
Playmidi 2.4 Copyright (C) 1994-1997 Nathan I. Laredo, AWE32 by Takashi Iwai
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details please see the file COPYING.
open /dev/sequencer: No such device

There is however a 0 Bytes "character device" /dev/sequencer in the 
filesystem.
Owned by root/audio, hence I tried as root. With write and read access 
for "everybody".

Is it necessary to point this device to some electronics? Should I try ALSA?

thanks in advance, Boudewijn