Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:34:00 -0800 (PST) From: "Bruce R. Montague" <brucem@mail.cruzio.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Cc: alec@SetFilePointer.com Subject: Re: Hardware support for AMD Geode CS5536 audio? Message-ID: <200801230634.m0N6Y0tf000427@mail.cruzio.com>
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Hi, re this from Alec Kloss, 21 Jan 2008: > I'm hoping someone will be able to help me out with the audio is > the Geode CS5536. This has come up a few times before, once early > this month and once last February. The CS5530 driver mentioned on > the soundsystem wiki doesn't work. > > ... > > Original FreeBSD gx5530 driver: > ... Hi, I wrote the geode audio driver for the CS5530 (found at the mentioned link), a good while back, I think for FreeBSD 4.x. This week is the first time I've received any feedback on this driver, a couple of pings along the line of the above. I honestly hadn't realized anybody was using it (I guess that's the problem with it working). If there was a thread last february, I must have missed it. I dont think I've ever seen the soundsystem wiki. I would try to fix/upgrade this driver if I had any hardware with a CS5536, but I don't. That said, can anyone recomend a cheap system that includes the CS5536, is generally available, doesn't cost very much and can be used as a minimal dev platform? (Surely all the OLPC work has made some interesting such systems available?) Or would anyone want to donate a "free" current AMD Geode reference platform? :) Even with hardware, it would probably be at least a month before I had time to look at it. Someone who knew FreeBSD drivers could probably fix it in a few compiles, if 5536 device-specific initialization is the problem. I only vaguely recall some of the initialization issues---I think there is a "magic bitmask" that has to be passed to the hypervisor (perhaps indirectly) to tell the hypervisor what _not_ to manage, so the FreeBSD driver will be able to manage it. I really hope this interface requirement is documented better for the CS5536 than the 5530, but maybe things weren't as bad as I remember. I think there can be a lot of dependencies between the CPU step, BIOS version, hypervisor version and southbridge (5536) version. It's kind of interesting to note that the Geode had a "hypervisor in the firmware" about a decade ago, somewhat similar to the manner that folks like VMware are now starting to do with ESX 3i "hardware-integrated hypervisor", etc... (the Geode hypervisor did not provide multiple CPU instances, rather virtual devices). -bruce
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