Kernel oops in maestro3/sound on Dell Inspiron 8000

[renderer]

Hi guys!

I have been trying to get sound working on my Dell Inspiron 8000 lapop.

Under Knoppix 3.6, it works fine with kernel 2.4, but under kernel 2.6 it
crashes with a kernel "oops".

Under Knoppix 3.8, it also crashes, but i don't have the option to use
a 2.4 kernel :(

The laptop boots fine, but I do not get the voice "initiating starting sequence"
with the 2.6-based Knopix. The process generating the audio hangs, and
any attempts to use audio afterwards crash, and cannot be kill -9'ed.

Has anyone got the maestro3 working in this configuration before?
How can I fix it so that sound works with Knoppix 3.8 and beyond?

The problem appears the begin during boot, where the following
messages are output:

<lots of stuff deleted>
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16ac)
apm: overridden by ACPI.
[drm] Initialized drm 1.0.0 20040925
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] enabled at IRQ 11
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:00.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
[drm] Initialized r128 2.5.0 20030725 on minor 0: ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility M4 AGP
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:06.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000138
printing eip:
c02c8bed
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0002 [#1]
PREEMPT SMP
Modules linked in: r128 drm via_agp sworks_agp sis_agp nvidia_agp intel_mch_agp intel_agp efficeon_agp ati_agp amd64_agp amd_k7_agp ali_agp autofs4 ext3 jbd agpgart maestro3 soundcore ac97_codec 3c59x mii hw_random parport_pc parport 8250 serial_core usbhid uhci_hcd af_packet orinoco_cs orinoco hermes pcmcia yenta_socket rsrc_nonstatic pcmcia_core video thermal processor fan container button battery ac rtc unionfs cloop sbp2 ohci1394 ieee1394 usb_storage ub ohci_hcd ehci_hcd usbcore
CPU: 0
EIP: 0060:[<c02c8bed>] Not tainted VLI
EFLAGS: 00010046 (2.6.11)
EIP is at _spin_lock_irqsave+0x15/0x64
eax: 00000000 ebx: 00000138 ecx: 00000003 edx: 00000202
esi: de07e000 edi: 00000003 ebp: de1006a0 esp: de07fec8
ds: 007b es: 007b ss: 0068
Process ogg123 (pid: 2872, threadinfo=de07e000 task=df522550)
Stack: 00000138 de6bf618 e0d62cec dde2e660 de07e000 ff005428 dac0eb70 e0d528a0
00000003 00000000 e0d67280 e0d5156b dac0eb70 de1006a0 de981260 00000001
00000000 dac0eb70 c015a78d dac0eb70 de1006a0 00000003 de1006a0 dac0eb70
Call Trace:
[<e0d62cec>] m3_open+0xf4/0x214 [maestro3]
[<e0d5156b>] soundcore_open+0x12b/0x2b0 [soundcore]
[<c015a78d>] chrdev_open+0xd9/0x17c
[<c01521b8>] dentry_open+0x13c/0x220
[<c0152076>] filp_open+0x46/0x4c
[<c01522f1>] get_unused_fd+0x55/0xac
[<c01523f6>] sys_open+0x32/0x84
[<c010342b>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb
Code: 8a 03 84 c0 7f e9 8b 43 04 85 c0 75 f1 eb e0 e8 fa f2 ff ff eb c5 56 53 89 c3 b8 00 e0 ff ff 21 e0 ff 40 14 89 c6 9c 5a fa 31 c0 <86> 03 84 c0 7e 05 5b 89 d0 5e c3 52 9d 8b 46 08 ff 4e 14 a8 08
<6>note: ogg123[2872] exited with preempt_count 1
NET: Registered protocol family 10
Disabled Privacy Extensions on device c0368c60(lo)
IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver

Thanks for any ideas!
--
Adrian Wrigley, Cambridge, UK.

[renderer]

(after a *lot* of messing around...)

There seem to be two sets of maestro3 kernel modules - the one at
/lib/modules/2.6.11/kernel/sound/oss/maestro3.ko
and the one at
/lib/modules/2.6.11/kernel/sound/pci/snd-maestro3.ko

The first one of these hangs when you try to play sound. This is the
module which gets used by default.

If you use the "alsa" cheatcode when booting, it doesn't load this module.

Then from a root command line type:
modprobe snd_maestro3
and it will load the ALSA modules instead. These work, but are
initialized to volume=0, and are silent initially.

I tried "alsa=maestro3" cheatcode, but this doesn't load the module
either.

What is the correct cheatcode to use the alsa module?