sound not working = slight problem

[Michael Havens]

so I was writing an email about this when the though came to check in my bag 
of tricks for a solution to this sound problem! So I grab my 3x5 cards and go 
to the 's' section and I see 'Set up ALSA PCI SoundCard' with the 
instructions to enter:
	amixer groups; amixer set PCM 100 unmute
with the response:
	amixer: Unknown command 'groups'...
	amixer: Unable to find simple control 'PCM',0

So I do a:
	
	bmike1 at 0[~]$ lspci
	0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C598 [Apollo MVP3] (rev
		04)
	0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C598/694x [Apollo 	
		MVP3/Pro133x AGP]
	0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586/A/B PCI-to-ISA 
		[Apollo VP] (rev 47)
	0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc.
		VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
	0000:00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 
		Controller (rev 02)
	0000:00:07.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586B ACPI (rev 10)
	0000:00:0a.0 Serial controller: 3Com Corp, Modem Division 56K FaxModem Model 
		5610 (rev 01)
	0000:00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 	
		100] (rev 05)
	0000:00:0c.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U/UW/D / AIC-7881U
	0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV10 [GeForce 256 	
		SDR] (rev 10)

but I don't see the sound card in there (not that this means much).
Yes, there is a pci soundcard in there. At on point in my 'adventures with 
linux' I had used the 'Setup ALSA PCI Soundcard' command successfully.
I did investigate the man pages for amixer and it appears to have changed some 
but when I modified the command it didn't help.

Ideas? Proposals? What?