Maybe you didn't load the oss compatibility modules? Could you send your alsa-modules configuration and the output of "lsmod | grep snd"?
That might be it. Here's my output:
grisey:/etc/init.d# lsmod | grep snd snd-ali5451 11660 0 snd-pcm 57120 0 [snd-ali5451] snd-timer 11176 0 [snd-pcm] snd-ac97-codec 24804 0 [snd-ali5451] snd 30860 0 [snd-ali5451 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec] soundcore 3556 0 [snd]
With this combination, asound plays o.k. and alsamixer works.
BTW, in my first mail I didn't realize it used an old pd version installed by Debian (0.34).
With the new one (after deinstalling the old one), I get the following error:
couldn't open MIDI output device 1 opened 0 MIDI input device(s) and 0 MIDI output device(s). /dev/dsp (read/write): No such device (now will try write-only...) /dev/dsp (writeonly): No such device error: OSS: SNDCTL_DSP_CHANNELS failed /dev/dsp audio I/O stuck... closing audio
The /dev/dsp exists. (About the MIDI: That's not my problem. That's taken care of as soon as I insmod my midi-driver. I'm just concerned with sound i/o).
Thanx Frank, Orm