In SuSE 8.0 one had to manually install the kernel modules as an add-on package and then separately compile them - but basically it was

cd /usr/src/packages/alsa

./configure --with-oss=yes --with-seq=yes --with-cards=Spiffo --with-isapnp=yes

make

make install

In 8.2 it's integrated.

The problem issues came from inappropriate entries in modules.conf.