THanks to all who offered suggestions. I am using V3.2-2003-03-28 (installed from cd) and will probably try the latest issue.

ls -l /dev/dsp
gives
crwxrwxrwx 1 root audio 14, 3 Apr 15 2001 /dev/dsp

When i try to run xmms from the terminal I get
'***WARNING***: oss-open(): Failed to open audio device /dev/dsp: no such device.

I also get a somewhat similar warning when booting during Initializing Peripherals.

gfrick