Knoppix didn't detect my soundcard but it did see and configured usb, firewire (both through hotplug), and pcmcia. I have none installed.
I got it to work by using the cheatcodes nousb nofirewire nopcmcia at the ISOLINUX bootpromt (actually only nousb was necessary).
To determine wether or not Knoppix could see the card I ran pnpdump. If it can't see it, pnpdump stops with segmentation fault.
After I knew the system could see the card I ran modconf and installed the driver.
That's it. Hope someone finds it useful.