Hi Elmar,
thank you for the replays

when connected to the via82xx card I get:
alsamixer: Card: VIA 8237 │
│ Chip: ICEnsemble VT1616i │
│ View: [Playback] Capture All │
│ Item: Master [dB gain=0.00]
and all the mixer bars to bring the vol up and down.
/proc/asound/cards: says:
0 [V8237 ]: VIA8237 - VIA 8237
VIA 8237 with VT1616i at 0xf600, irq 11
lspci | grep audio: says:
Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
lsmod: says:
fuse 49856 2
snd_via82xx 20228 0
snd_ac97_codec 88896 1 snd_via82xx
ac97_bus 1268 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_mpu401_uart 5652 1 snd_via82xx
snd_rawmidi 17540 1 snd_mpu401_uart
dm_crypt 11448 0
dm_mod 47732 1 dm_crypt
aes_i586 7380 0
aes_generic 28916 1 aes_i586
nfsd 78520 1
exportfs 3636 1 nfsd
ipv6 216664 18
and still no sound

I am sorry if i posted to much info as I am abit lost.

p.s. is there a way I can make the opt.sqfs thiner becouse all I need for this system is gnome-windowmanager gnome-filemanager and rdesktop so my users will get an empty desktop(no panel) with one icon that lunches rdesktop to the terminal servers. by doing so I can run ploplinux on thinclient with minimal ram size.
tnx
DotCom