In gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.0_beta11-r2 alsa got updated to alsa 1.0.0rc2, however it seems that no newly supported soundcards are added. For example au8820 which is available from 0.9.7c on, is not viaible when doing make menuconfig. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.just make menuconfig and see it missing. 2. 3.
that would be an alsa bug (feature? inadequacy?), not a gentoo kernel bug. might just need to wait for a newer test kernel to come out with said drivers
for now I will close this as this is mostly an upstream issue. I will keep my eye out and ensure patches are added to additional card support if needed by 2.6.1, alsa1 was recently released, and the kernel hasnt yet caught up (in portage at least)