Sound broke in Slackware 10 / kernel 2.6.9

[MichaelS]

Hey all,

For some reason I lost sound on my Slackware 10 box running a custom 2.6.9 kernel. All was working perfectly up until today (nothing changed).

Funny part is that when I boot into the original Slack 10 kernel 2.4.26 sound works perfectly.

Some technical info while in the 2.6.9 kernel:
/dev/dsp disappeared along with /dev/dsp0, /dev/dsp1, /dev/audio, etc
/dev/sound is non-existant (not sure if it ever was)

There doesn't appear to be anything relevant in the output of dmesg or in /var/log/messages

The ironic part about this is that when KDE starts up, it plays the startup sound ok, but none of the audio players will work (i.e. xmms, totem, etc.). If I try to go into KDE's Control Center, then into Sound System, the Control Center will lock up. All other options in Control Center work, including the other items listed for Audio.

Hardware Info:
Athlon XP 2800 with an ASUS A7N8X-VM motherboard. I believe the sound is either an Nvidia2 chipset or a RealTek chipset.

I have to admit, considering i've been using Linux for quite a few years now, i'm baffled on this one!

Thanks,

Michael