Congratulations. .... and thanks Andy for pitching in .... I'm back to a limited 24kbps dialup connection, ...

emwaiz, I notice from the script that your PC has an ALC268:
http://pastebin.ca/1003667

Updating to the latest ALSA was exactly the correct action. openSUSE-10.3 came with v.1.0.14 of ALSA, and there were a lot of updates made to ALSA for the ALC268 in alsa 1.0.15 and also 1.0.16.

How did you update? Compile or download custom rpms for a newer ALSA version? Note if there is a further update to the kernel, there is always a possibility that your sound will stop working, in which case you simply need to update again obtaining compatibility with any new kernel version.

Enjoy your sound!