ALSA on a ALi M5451 chipset (laptop onboard snd)

[lots]

First of all i had it working a week or so ago. But i shouldnt have installed it then because i wasnt done configuring the kernel to my liking.. so thus since then i recompiled the kernel (to support acpi and etc) and now ALSA isnt working i followed the guide and emerged alsa-driver again.. but the sound wont play still.. also i noticed that i dont get a /dev/sound directory.. or any of the others dsp.. etc im somewhat of a noob when it comes to gentoo so an explanation of how i can get the sound back and working would be great..

just some random info..
the kernel has the sound support as a module, so doing a modinfo soundcore returns stuff.. however when i try and start alsa it complains that it cant find the modules (which i would assume would have something to do with my /dev/sound /dev/dsp /dev/mixer etc missing).. so i tried to do a update-modules (after re-emerging alsa-driver) and i also went thru and made sure that the config files had the proper setup and everything.. and tried the update-modules again.. and no luck.. it still complains about missing the snd-ali5451 module.

any suggestions? heh im stuck