How to avoid the error message 'alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device' with YMF-744B on Debian 5.0

In the beginning I refered to the web site mentioned
below to solve the problem.
http://www.k13i.com/~koya/notepc.html
I'd like to express my appreciation to the web site
mentioned above. It is, however, written in my native
language, Japanese so you might need to use something
like a translator, such as Google translate but I will
describe the gist of its content and support you in
solving the problem.

The problem was that the error message "alsamixer:
function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such
device" was shown on the screen and that
alsamixer wasn't available on Debian 5.0 when we
started alsamixergui with YMF-744B. This might be
because the firmware for YMF-744B wasn't installed
and because the DFSG adhered to a strict interpretation
of FOSS.

According to the web site mentioned above, we need
to go to ALSA project homepage,
http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page
and download alsa-firmware-1.0.20. After then we need
to install alsa-firmware. The command lines are given
below.

# tar jxvf alsa-firmware-1.0.20.tar.bz2
# cd alsa-firmware-1.0.20
# ./configure
# make
# make install
# alsaconf

After configuring ALSA through alsaconf, we could
confirm alsamixer was available on Debian 5.0.

Finally, I will be happy to assist you in setting up
alsamixer with YMF-744B on Debian 5.0.