Re: sound blaster problem -

It does suck to find a working piece of equipment you already have is
useless due to driver issues.

As for other sound cards - outside of some Pro-level cards and the X-Fi,
I only know of one PCIe sound card, the Asus Xonar. The cheapest Xonar
is around $90 (expensive, but it is a very good card, some prefer it over
X-Fi purely on quality issues). Newegg is a good place to buy it if you are
in the USA.

Sound cards only recently entered the PCIe arena, because they generally
don't need the bandwidth of PCIe and PCIe's design actually causes some
problems for sound cards.

I don't know what you are doing with your audio, but for many things,
modern onboard sound is fine. Onboard sound chips used to be stereo
only and had quality issues and noise from the rest of board. But modern
sound chips are often very good, and are usually 5.1 or 7.1.

If your board doesn't have onboard sound, you could go with old-fashioned
PCI, assuming you have a free slot. I understand the urge to use the newest
interconnect, but it isn't necessarily the best option for sound right now.

I fully agree with you...my situation is that i only have pci-express slots avialble and i have no sound on hte board - -- so i need sound!!!!

Is everyone positive that there is no sound driver for creative labs under linux...??

I ran lsmod and got this below - it does not count for anything ???

srvname:~# locate ca0106 | grep ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-amd64/

kernel/sound/pci/ca0106/snd-ca0106.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/pci/ca0106/snd-ca0106.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-6-vserver-amd64/kernel/sound/pci/ca0106/snd-ca0106.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-6-xen-amd64/kernel/sound/pci/ca0106/snd-ca0106.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-6-xen-vserver-amd64/kernel/sound/pci/ca0106/snd-ca0106.ko
thor:~# sudo modprobe -v snd-ca0106
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/snd-page-alloc.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/pci/ac97/snd-ac97-bus.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/soundcore.ko
install /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-ioctl32 ; : ; }
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/snd.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/snd-timer.ko
install /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-pcm && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-pcm-oss ; : ; }
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/snd-pcm.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/oss/snd-mixer-oss.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/oss/snd-pcm-oss.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/pci/ac97/snd-ac97-codec.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-device.ko
install /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-rawmidi && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-seq-midi ; : ; }
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/snd-rawmidi.ko
install /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-seq && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-seq-midi ; /sbin/modprobe -- quiet snd-seq-oss ; : ; }
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-midi-event.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-midi.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/core/seq/oss/snd-seq-oss.ko
install /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-ca0106 && /lib/alsa/modprobe-post-install snd-ca0106
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-amd64/kernel/sound/pci/ca0106/snd-ca0106.ko