Fedora, ALSA and MIDI OH MY! (Theme to lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!)

[Daniel B. Thurman]

Folks,

Is it me or does Fedora have a real problem when
it has to deal with Sound cards?

I cannot for the LIFE OF ME figure out WHY is FEDORA
IMPOSSIBLE getting sound to work!?!?!?  I can get
my CDROM to play music -- and wave files, etc but...
MIDI is one of those simple things that *should*
be working but alas -- no -- it is not simple...
it is said not to work very well....

I have tried a cheap Yamaha YMF-724F (DS-1) and a not-so-cheap
Creative Labs, SoundBlaster LIVE card and there is no way in
h$ll I can get midi to work for either cards!?!?!?  I cannot
even figure out how to disable the KDE arts server since it
was removed from the KControl and so -- kindly -- how can I
disable it -- just in case it is preventing midi from working
right?

Yes, I scouraged goggle, AskJeves, etc. and it seems people
got these cards to work just fine on debian, Mandrake, Suze
but heck -- NOT ON FEDORA!?!?  I tried this on FC-2 and FC-3.

Please, please, please, tell me -- how can I get MIDI to work?

I was told that for YMF-724F the following line should
be added in the /etc/modprobe.conf file:

options snd-ymfpci index=0 mpu_port=0x330

but -- nope!  Does not work

As for the SB-Live card -  no information how in what
to add to the modprobe.conf file....

Any help is GREATLY APPRECIATED!

Humbled....
~Dan