I couldn't get the test iso to boot into KDE. It would go to a black screen with regular boot and with Safegfx mode. I could jump to another console, but ctrl-alt-f7 never finished loading the DisplayManager.
But in other news, Messing with audio and mocp, I did discover something. Previously audio was controlled via Master and PCM channels.
Under the new kernel with the non-Stac92xx audio, Sound IS working now.
While the speaker channel wasn't muted it didn't have audible sound (the channel was set at half volume on the slider) With all the sliders maxed, I do have sound, but it's not quite as loud as it was under the earlier kernel for some reason.