I was wondering if you maybe had a built-in plus your card. I may be wrong by now, but I believe KDE and Alsa has problem with more than one card. You didn't mention KDE, but I'm betting here...
I think you're right Tom: I've observed this kind of problems on two cards setups before. It could be a arts problem or a ALSA one. Thomas: as a first try, you can disable the AC97 audio from BIOS (hoping the BIOS removes it correctly from the PCI resources). If this doesn't work (as in "you continue to see the AC97 audio card), remove the SoundBlaster card. If with only one card it works, but you need 2 cards, we can do other tests: for example, killing off arts and testing the two cards "manually" with native alsa tools and from a console shell. If this works: - maybe changing artsd settings (first one that comes to mind: "sound IO system" to "ALSA" instead of "Auto") or upgrading to a new version of artsd could help. - If the problem is in ALSA itself, we could try using a different kernel. I think I'll try this shorlly, since I have the same kernel error messages on audio you have, and Mr. Mantel released a 2.4.21 test kernel. Also, which version of KDE and kernel are you using? The ones shipped with SuSE or some new version? If this does NOT work: - maybe yast has problems writing the 2-card setup in /etc/modules.conf. I recall something similar, but I don't remember if it was yast or some other setup tool. Try to send me your modules.conf. if this is the case, you can fix the modules.conf manually (but you'll have to never run again yast's audio setup :) Ciao, Roberto