1) sndconfig needs (at least when I downloaded it last weekend) a new version of libnewt (0.40). (I'll be honest; this COULD have been fixed since, but I haven't looked). That version of libnewt won't run because of an unsatisfied reference to __bzero. (With the underbars!). I suspect that it's an unintended dependency due to a new compiler or new option: I downloaded the sources and compiles up and runs just fine. When it doesn't run, it's gotten far enough to put the tty into raw mode. (Easy enough to fix, but...) 2) The new sndconfig does recognize the CMI8830 and its clone the HT1869V+ (which is what's on my motherboard). However, due to strangenesses in my configuration, the defaults don't work (they don't work on DOS, either). (It's an IRQ conflict with an IRQ level that no hardware claims: maybe a motherboard problem.) Bug: isapnp DOES detect the conflict and reports it when run by hand. However, the output from isapnp is not reported by sndconfig. In this case, it gets far enough that the test of playing a .wav file works, but (e.g.) synaesthesia doen't work because of interrupt problems (which the soundblaster module also reports). So... (1) sndconfig should report isapnp's errors. (2) it should report modprobe's errors. (It appears that things are such that sndprobe makes things sort-of work in the same boot lifetime that it is run in, but until everything is right, sound doesn't work after a reboot. --- Now that I've gotten the interrupts untangled everything works fine for me.) 3) The soundblaster driver works fine with the chip, but the setup seems strange: I was never able to get it to work at IO 0x220, which is the default for the DOS drivers for this chip (as far as I can tell from the vague statements in the associated documentation). I have it set up at 0x530 and that's fine. (There may be a luck factor here.) (The chip as both SB and WSS ports, and the DOS setup "wants" the WSS at 0x530 and the SB at 0x220). 4) The chip supports S/PDIF, but I was unable to find anywhere any drivers that support it. Since the only channel from the CD to the sound board is via the S/PDIF channel, I needed it. I ended up hacking dspcntrl (from the web) to do the job, but consider this an enhancement request to the sound drivers and mixers to support controlling that bit. (Ditto the loudness and 3D bits.) I'm submitting a separate bug w.r.t. isapnp at boot time, that's a bit tangled with this.
1) is due to glibc2.1. 2) sndconfig does print isapnp errors, but only if isapnp exits non-zero. If it exits with a status of zero, it assumes it succeeded. 3) Using 0x530 for the sb driver shouldn't work (it doesn't on the CMI8330 we have here), as that's the WSS emulation. You could try using 0x240. 4) is a driver issue; we don't maintain the drivers, per se.
Thank you for the suggestions. We have noted them and will work on getting them into the next release.