By the time you run setvol, the disks are up and spinning, and the savearea has been read in by the kernel.

So.. write a shell script (or modify setvol.c) to read the SaveBase value from /proc/empeg_state, and then seek to that location in /dev/kmem and read the savearea. Then extract the saved vol level from the savearea, taking into account car/home modes, and you're all set. Simple, huh?

-ml