Somebody in the thread at some point said:
Build CONFIG_SND_HDA_HWDEP=y and you'll have /dev/snd/hwC0D0 device. With the hda-verb program in the URL below, you can exec the verb on the fly: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/tiwai/misc/hda-verb-0.2.tar.bz2
Thanks for the hints and the applet... after some meddling around I found the magic incantations to fire up the amp / speakers on this laptop are to force model=acer-aspire in /etc/modprobe.conf, then using the applet from the URL quoted above:
./hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x15 SET_EAPD_BTLENABLE 2
I confirmed stereo operation... it doesn't react to headphone insertion, plays audio through speakers and headphone jack in that case. Didn't try 5.1 (this laptop has a 5.1 speaker set) yet but I wouldn't be surprised if that was trouble too. Still this is waaaay better than silence! Thanks again for the help.
-Andy