setting a spca5xx webcam under sarge?

[Bruno Buys <brunobuys@gmail.com>]

I'm trying to set up a 'Z-Star Microeletronics Corp.' webcam in this
sarge machine (name provided by lsusb, together with '0ac8:305b'. The
driver's website http://mxhaard.free.fr claims this is a supported
camera). After some googling, I downloaded the spca5xx driver and
compiled it with module-assistant. Everything went ok, and modprobe
inserts the driver with no apparent problems. The thing is, accessing
the camera causes the whole system to freeze. Some tutorials suggest its
a gcc version problem between the kernel gcc and the driver gcc.
Relevant modules loaded are:
spca5xx
videodev
v4l1-compat
v4l2-common
usbcore

Other people seem to be using this webcam model quite successfully, with
various distros, so I believe its some troubleshootable thing which I am
missing badly.
Someone help?

Also, how do I figure which gcc version my kernel was compiled with? Its
a 2.6.8-3-k7 stock.
My gcc version is 3.3.5. Is that correct?

thanks!