My soundcard is a SB32 with 512kB RAM (SIMM) installed in the
sockets. My card does not have the "Advanced Signal Processor, AWE",
but otherwise has the EMU8000 stuff.
The driver does not detect my soundcard as an "AWE32" (which is
strictly speaking correct), but complains (rather unverbose)
"AWE32 not found"
"AWE32: not detected"
According to my knowledge the test for the AWE32 is too strict; I
could benefit from most of the features, except positional audio and
some reverb effects. Also there are several subtypes of the SB32;
some are not even upgradable with RAM, but they still can play the
sounds in ROM.
Still the SB32 can play 32 or 30 (two needed for RAM refresh) voices
(I think the older types can play less). Thus it would be good to
detect the SB32/EMU8000 even outside the lowlevel driver.
Ulrich
P.S. I don't know the internals of the sound driver, and I'm not
subscribed in this list (linux-kernel).