More alsa questions.

[Thomas Ward]

Hi, list. Here is what is happening so far with my alsa setup.

I've successfully installed the alsa-drivers, alsa-lib, and alsa-utils. 
I've modified the /etc/modules.conf file to reflect the new modules, and 
I've added alsasound to chkconfig, and sset alsasound to come up on 
startup.
When I first ran service alsasound start to load the alsasound service it 
announced that it loaded my soundcard, and then told me no config in 
/etc/asound.state. I have to unmute my card.
Now the question is naturally:

1. How do I unmute my card.
2. What is a quick   way to configure my  wav, midi, cd audio, etc?
3. When I tried configuring my settings in amixer according to the man 
page I get the following error:
amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such file or directory

What does this mean, and what is going on here?
Thanks.