Alsa analog but no digital output

[frednet]

I'm tearing my hair out trying to get spdif optical digital output working. I've got an identical motherboard which worked perfectly after installing Gutsy so I don't understand what is wrong with this one! On the board that works, alsamixer shows a digital flag which doesn't appear on this machine. I've tried copying /var/lib/alsa/asound.state from the working machine but it gets overwritten by something every time I restart alsa.
Where do you configure alsa in kubuntu, I'm used to other distros and can't find out where the config script is.
aadebug gives me

mythtv@mythtvbox:~$ ./aadebug
ALSA Audio Debug v0.1.0 - Sat Nov 24 21:43:10 GMT 2007
http://alsa.opensrc.org/aadebug
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

Kernel ----------------------------------------------------
Linux mythtvbox 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 21:45:15 GMT 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Loaded Modules --------------------------------------------
snd_hda_intel 337192 1
snd_pcm_oss 50048 0
snd_mixer_oss 20096 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 94344 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy 5380 0
snd_seq_oss 36864 0
snd_mpu401 11944 0
snd_mpu401_uart 11008 1 snd_mpu401
snd_seq_midi 11008 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9984 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_rawmidi 29824 2 snd_mpu401_uart,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq 62496 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_mid i_event
snd_timer 27272 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 10260 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi ,snd_seq
snd 69288 13 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,sn d_seq_oss,snd_mpu401,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,s nd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
snd_page_alloc 12560 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

Modprobe Conf ---------------------------------------------
Warning: module config file does not exist
This means any kernel modules will not be auto loaded
See your linux distro docs on how to create this file

Proc Asound -----------------------------------------------
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.14 (Thu May 31 09:03:25 2007 UTC).
0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfe024000 irq 22
1 [UART ]: MPU-401 UART - MPU-401 UART
MPU-401 UART at 0x330, irq 10
2: : timer
3: : sequencer
4: [ 1- 0]: raw midi
5: [ 1] : control
6: [ 0- 1]: digital audio playback
7: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback
8: [ 0- 0]: digital audio capture
9: [ 0] : control
cat: /proc/asound/hwdep: No such file or directory
00-01: AD198x Digital : AD198x Digital : playback 1
00-00: AD198x Analog : AD198x Analog : playback 1 : capture 1
Client info
cur clients : 4
peak clients : 4
max clients : 192

Client 0 : "System" [Kernel]
Port 0 : "Timer" (Rwe-)
Port 1 : "Announce" (R-e-)
Connecting To: 15:0
Client 14 : "Midi Through" [Kernel]
Port 0 : "Midi Through Port-0" (RWe-)
Client 15 : "OSS sequencer" [Kernel]
Port 0 : "Receiver" (-we-)
Connected From: 0:1
Client 20 : "MPU-401 UART" [Kernel]
Port 0 : "MPU-401 UART MIDI" (RWeX)

Dev Snd ---------------------------------------------------
controlC0 controlC1 midiC1D0 pcmC0D0c pcmC0D0p pcmC0D1p seq timer

CPU -------------------------------------------------------
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+
cpu MHz : 2204.599

RAM -------------------------------------------------------
MemTotal: 996088 kB
SwapTotal: 2907724 kB

Hardware --------------------------------------------------
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
04:08.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder (rev 05)
04:08.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [MPEG Port] (rev 05)
04:08.4 Multimedia controller: Conexant CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [IR Port] (rev 05)

anyone got any ideas?

[dibl]

Re: Alsa analog but no digital output

Where exactly in the alsamixergui do you see the digital flag?

Did you put snd-intel8x0 in the /etc/modules file? I don't have to do that on this Kubuntu system, but I did on my Fedora 8 system (same hardware platform).

[frednet]

Re: Alsa analog but no digital output

Digital is the last on the far right under capture.
I didn't put snd-intel8x0 in the /etc/modules file on the machine that works, this is the part that worries me though

cat: /proc/asound/hwdep: No such file or directory
00-01: AD198x Digital : AD198x Digital : playback 1
00-00: AD198x Analog : AD198x Analog : playback 1 : capture 1

what is hwdep?