Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 01:18:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Howard Lew <digital@www2.shoppersnet.com> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>, tg@ihf.rwth-aachen.de, mark@vmunix.com, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: PNP and new Sound code ? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.971022003920.28928A-100000@www2.shoppersnet.com> In-Reply-To: <199710220729.QAA01849@word.smith.net.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, Mike Smith wrote: > > > > I think the original question was about the new sound code in 2.2-stable > > or 2.2.5... Not current. > > Very good. Now, I replied that it wasn't in 2.2, and that was a damn > good thing because your next statement is wrong: > > > Gee, I wish it would have made it in because it > > sure appears rock solid stable. > > Only a) it's not, and b) it is not backwards compatible. Making a > change like this in what is meant to be a stability-oriented release > would be completely stupid. Have you tried the driver? Luigi is putting it in snd so that won't break those users who rely on the code that is currently in sound. In other words, users have a choice to choose between the new or the old driver. If you are worried about stability, the code does not need to be enabled. Why not have it as a kernel option? or have it disabled by default, but with the option to enable it? just like the way the 32 bit IDE code has been for a long time. As for being compatible with applications, I have verified that it works fine with many of the popular sound apps including Real Audio player 3.0, playmidi, vgetty, and xanim. If you think the standard FreeBSD sound driver in 2.2.2R is stable, that is far from being true. On some systems it will hang and reboot the computer by itself (MSS mode with Opti 924 chipset). On other cards (mostly PNP cards), FreeBSD will not even probe its existence because the bios does not autoconfigure PNP cards. You will not get stability complaints from the latter group of users because they cannot even get any sound at all. > Great, so you have a working soundcard driver that is ABI-incompatible > with most of the applications out there. Great. Which applications? If you know which applications will not work, it would be more helpful to let us know which ones cause problems so we can help Luigi fix them rather than make wide-reaching negative remarks.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.91.971022003920.28928A-100000>