Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 15:28:35 -0700 From: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com> To: Mark Tinguely <tinguely@plains.NoDak.edu> Cc: freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG, sales@omt.com Subject: Re: Regard to phone call about FreeBSD drivers Message-ID: <199708212228.PAA02389@rah.star-gate.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 21 Aug 1997 11:55:27 CDT." <199708211655.LAA06436@plains.NoDak.edu>
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Hi, Spoke briefly with Dr. Redi . Basically, I am going to meet him tomorrow and just chat a bit more. I have dealt with OmniMedia in the past . Briefly, cause I am still at wor, does anyone have any cool ideas for next generation audio/video hardware -- desired codecs, telephony support, full duplex audio. etc,... Cheers, Amancio >From The Desk Of Mark Tinguely : > > To: Mr Reddy > OmniMedia Technology, Inc > sales@omt.com > From: Mark Tinguely > NDSU Computer Science > tinguely@plains.NoDak.edu > CC: FreeBSD Multimedia Group > freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org > > Dear Mr. Reddy: > > This is in response to your phone message left on my voice mail August 20. > I am summarizing the phone message to answer your questions, and to inform th e > FreeBSD mailing list members which are receiving a carbon copy of this mail. > > In the phone called you mentioned that OMT sells a "Meteor" capture card > clone, that you sell other video products, that your company has a web > page that displays the products (http://www.otm.com/), that you would > be interested in FreeBSD drivers for some of your other products and finally > that you are interested in information about the drivers for your literature. > > We, the FreeBSD multimedia group, have been aware of the Sequence P1S for ove r > a year. I have your web page listed for the Sequence P1S and Talisman > MPEG Decoder on a FreeBSD video capture web page > (http://www.cs.ndsu.NoDak.edu/~tinguely/mbone-freebsd/video.html). > > The Meteor/Sequence P1S are good cards, but the Philips SAA7116, which > is the digital video to PCI interface to these boards, causes an illegal > PCI sequence when used with newer PCI buses. As a remedy, the FreeBSD people > that wanted to use video capture devices with Pentium Pro computers developed > drivers for adapters for the Brooktree BT484 chipset. > > I mention the above to illustrate that because FreeBSD multimedia development > is done by volunteers, we usually choose products that will work on the lates t > equipment. If an adapter will not work with the current technology, I would > not expect to get a driver written. I still mention the Sequence P1S, BUT > I also list the limitation that can not work in the newer PCI buses. If > Philips fixes the SAA7116, I will remove the listed limitation. > > The "meteor" driver source code is distributed with source code for FreeBSD. > To enable the software, the user needs to edit the kernel configuration file > and add: > > device meteor0 > > after compiling, installing and rebooting the kernel the capture card is read y > to work. We include a few simple sample C programs that illustrate changing > the camera input ports, and the different capturing modes. The, code necessar y > to use the meteor with the MBONE video conferencing tool, "vic", is included > in the distributed sources for vic. > > New device drivers for FreeBSD is the hardest of your questions. The FreeBSD > multimedia development group is a loosely organized group of collaborators. > In general, a board is initially supported because the developer has a need f or > that category of board (video, audio, MPEG, etc). For example, I can see that > a future need a *real time* MPEG I or MPEG II capture board will be in demand > in the multimedia group when the price of the MPEG processing chip fall. > > I think there are a couple things that may help you get people in the FreeBSD > multimedia group to support more of your products: > > 1) give free, or discount the price of a few boards. > > 2) we NEED documentation on the chipsets used and the operation of the boards . > Matrox Meteor driver is the perfect example of getting NO information > from a company (Matrox). The meteor driver exists only because of excellen t > documantation from Philips. > > 3) try to get a two or three people to take on a project instead of one perso n. > we are doing these drivers for work or on our own time, but only as a > part time basis. Having more than one person working on the driver helps > fill in the gaps when others are swamped with their real work/life. Having > more than one person is also great for motivation. > > 4) understand the volunteers generally support the latest and greatest > hardware. Altruistically, we like to see more devices supported so that > FreeBSD is used more, but we have only so much time. > > 5) if you are really, really, really want a board supported, you may be able > to contract one of the FreeBSD users to do the work. Do so at your own > risk. > > This letter is intended to be an introduction between the FreeBSD group and > you, Mr Reddy. Hopefully, with this introduction we can establish a dialog > that helps you get more driver support and helps us support multimedia device s. > > --mark tinguely.
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