alsa and module-init-tools package

[Christopher Moore]

Hello,
I'm running debian sarge with a 2.6 kernel.  How do I tell the kernel which
snd module to load.  In kernel 2.4 I would put an alias like:
alias snd-card-0 snd-opti93x  in the /etc/modules or /etc/modules.conf

I was expecting to find a similar alias in the /etc/modprobe.d directory,
but there isn't any such animal.  

So the basic question is what I do to get a soundcard running on a 2.6
kernel aside from enabling the card in the kernel configuration and
installing the modules.

tia
Chris