Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 10:26:48 +0100 (MET) From: Tomas Klockar <dateck@ludd.luth.se> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Status and future of sound drivers ? Message-ID: <199703130926.KAA28523@sister.ludd.luth.se> In-Reply-To: <3931.858239587@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at "Mar 12, 97 11:53:07 pm"
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According to Jordan K. Hubbard: > > I notice that the sound driver sources on 2.1.7 are mostly the same > > as 2.1R, and sound support is, IMHO, one of the worst parts of > > FreeBSD. > > The sound drivers in FreeBSD are abandoned. That's the basic truth. > Yes, many of us were also waiting in hopes that OSS Lite (the freely > redistributable, source available version of OSS) would come along > soon and save us from our sound code, but Hannu recently announced > that this wouldn't happen until sometime in mid-'98, so that's > obviously out as a short-to-medium term solution. I had an email conversation with him recently where he told me that he couldn't give me the source for OSS/Free to port to freebsd. If anyone is interested in my mailconversation with him then just email me, so I won't spam this list more then necessery. And I also talked to you about maybe fixing the sound drivers. I have started to try to make a god driver for GUS PNP. The one that hasty did doesn't work completely. And it doesn't use the features of this card. I can play sounds but not record. > Frankly, if someone wanted to take over FreeBSD audio and take it in > new and interesting (or even simply functional :) directions then I > certainly wouldn't argue. Perhaps OSS isn't in our future at all - I > could certainly see something evolving in FreeBSD's audio support > which turned out to be simply too nice to switch away from. :-) If we could get OSS now it would be the future maybe. If we get it in half a year then well we can go our own way. > > First of all, the sound driver currently includes the "audio" and the > > "music" stuff. I don't know how good is this. "audio" staff is mostly > > used for conferencing-type of applications, "music" (meant as FM > > synthesis, OPL, midi...) is probably more oriented to games and other > > The audio is fairly reasonable (if you're talking about access to the > DSP) and the music support generally sucks. :) > > > Our sound driver is heavily outdated, especially on the > > "audio" section: most "modern" sound boards nowadays have full duplex > > support via WSS and AD1848/CD4231 compatible codecs, are configured > > via PnP, and such hardware costs very little (the equivalent of US$ 25 > > That is also true. > > > I have the feeling that the "music" part is in better shape, but I > > cannot tell for sure since I have no interest in the latter. > > Well it's not, so whomever takes over audio, I'd hope they'd also pay > some attention to the music support. :-) > > > Considering the above, I am totally in favour of trying to support > > sound devices autonomously, by starting from the current sources and > > trying to bring them in line with current FreeBSD drivers and new > > boards. Inclusion of support for a common interface will be easily > > added (assuming that we don't get it right in the first place) > > since we have full control on the sources. > > OK. Well, since the audio code is, as I said before, abandoned at > this time then I guess that leaves... You? Can Luigi Rizzo fill > Amancio Hasty's shoes? ;-) My suggestion is that we add the software for PNP initialazion as a general PNP initialazion, and in the sound drivers that support PNP we can read thoose settings. Then If your moderboard init your PNP devices then you don't need the pnp code and disabels it and if you like me don't have that feature then you just add: controller pnp0 coded by smpatel@freebsd.org (I realy like this code and would like to see it in 2.2 release) controller snd0 device iw0 (GUS PNP) at isa? port 0x220 irq 5 drq1 5 drq2 7 vector iwintr (This will be the case for the driver I'm in progress writing.) (It's based on the gus driver but has some major changes. Like supporting 8MB of memory.) I'm very interested in helping developing theese drivers. /Tomas -- Tomas Klockar can be found at the following adresses: Kårhusvägen 4:23 | Furuvägen 102 | dateck@ludd.luth.se 977 54 Luleå | 871 52 Härnösand | dateck@solace.mh.se Tel: +46-920-231335 | Tel: +46-611-13393 | d94-tkl@sm.luth.se
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