Ok I finally got around to plugging the mic and speakers into my AWE64
sound card this morning... after a bit of fiddling, I cannot find any
evidence that it is working.

dmesg shows:

Copyright (c) 1996, 1997 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

NetBSD 1.3 (ZEN) #1: Sun Feb 15 23:38:24 EST 1998
    root@zen.quick.com.au:/u0/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/ZEN
cpu0: family 5 model 2 step c
cpu0: Intel Pentium (P54C) (586-class)
real mem  = 66715648
avail mem = 63934464
using 840 buffers containing 3440640 bytes of memory
mainbus0 (root)
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0
pchb0: Intel 82439HX System Controller (TXC) (rev. 0x03)
pcib0 at pci0 dev 7 function 0
pcib0: Intel 82371SB PCI-to-ISA Bridge (PIIX3) (rev. 0x01)
Intel 82371SB IDE Interface (PIIX3) (IDE mass storage, interface 0x80) at pci0 dev 7 function 1 not configured
Matrox MGA Millennium 2064W ("Storm") (VGA display, revision 0x01) at pci0 dev 11 function 0 not configured
ahc0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0
ahc0: interrupting at irq 11
ahc0: aic7880 Wide Channel, SCSI Id=7, 16 SCBs
scsibus0 at ahc0 channel 0: 16 targets
...
...
com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3: ns16550a, working fifo
lpt0 at isa0 port 0x378-0x37b: polled
sb: can't map i/o space 0x220/24 in probe
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0-0xff: using exception 16
pc0 at isa0 port 0x60-0x6f irq 1: color
pc0: console
fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0-0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2
fd0 at fdc0 drive 0: 1.44MB, 80 cyl, 2 head, 18 sec
isapnp0 at isa0 port 0x279: read port 0x203
sb1 at isapnp0 port 0x220/16,0x330/2,0x388/4 irq 5 drq 1,5
sb1: Creative SB AWE64 PnP Audio: dsp v4.16
audio0 at sb1
joy0 at isapnp0 port 0x200/8
joy0: Creative SB AWE64 PnP Game
joy0: joystick not connected
isapnp0: <Creative SB AWE64 PnP, CTL0022, , WaveTable> port 0x620/4 not configured
isapnp0: <Creative SB AWE64 PnP, CTL2011, PNP0600, IDE> port 0x168/8,0x36e/2 irq 10 not configured
biomask 1840 netmask 1c40 ttymask 1c42
boot device: sd0

Which I take to mean that dev/audio should work - found sb1.

cat /dev/audio shows a flat signal ('g' repeated indefinitely), and
output does not produce any sound at all.

I built a few of the audio tools out of pkgsrc (of about a week ago)
including xwave, rplay and xmmix in the hope that one of them would
kick the sb into life.  No joy.

Clearly I'm missing something fundamental, so clues welcome.

--sjg