thanks for the idea
the audio prefs allow you to set the audio device, which is /dev/dsp
now, interestingly, I discovered a few things. I HAD kphone running perfectly on my laptop (suse 9.3), using siproxd on the firewall, able to make calls to speaking clock at FWD, echo test. NOW it's broken.
In siproxd's config, running on the linux firewall, you specify the "inside" and "outside" interface, and for my wired network, eth0 is inside, but eth1 is wireless (zaurus). It replies to the client using the "inside" interface, so I had to change it to eth1 otherwise the Z wouldn't register - because the siproxd's replies came from the WRONG address. Now, the laptop isn't getting audio any more!
I've switched siproxd back to eth0, for wired lan and laptop, but still no audio.
The good news is that I can ring my Z from the laptop, and the Z makes a ringing sound, and vice versa! Oddly, kphone didn't care too much that siproxd was replying from the wrong interface. hmmm. more tcpdumping required.