patch-2.1.109 linux/Documentation/sound/sonicvibes

• Lines: 74
• Date: Fri Jul 10 14:03:35 1998
• Orig file: v2.1.108/linux/Documentation/sound/sonicvibes
• Orig date: Wed Dec 31 16:00:00 1969

diff -u --recursive --new-file v2.1.108/linux/Documentation/sound/sonicvibes linux/Documentation/sound/sonicvibes
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+ALaw/uLaw sample formats
+------------------------
+
+This driver does not support the ALaw/uLaw sample formats.
+ALaw is the default mode when opening a sound device
+using OSS/Free. The reason for the lack of support is
+that the hardware does not support these formats, and adding
+conversion routines to the kernel would lead to very ugly
+code in the presence of the mmap interface to the driver.
+And since xquake uses mmap, mmap is considered important :-)
+and no sane application uses ALaw/uLaw these days anyway.
+In short, playing a Sun .au file as follows:
+
+cat my_file.au > /dev/dsp
+
+does not work. Instead, you may use the play script from
+Chris Bagwell's sox-12.14 package (available from the URL
+below) to play many different audio file formats.
+The script automatically determines the audio format
+and does do audio conversions if necessary.
+http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/cbagwell/projects.html
+
+
+Blocking vs. nonblocking IO
+---------------------------
+
+Unlike OSS/Free this driver honours the O_NONBLOCK file flag
+not only during open, but also during read and write.
+This is an effort to make the sound driver interface more
+regular. Timidity has problems with this; a patch
+is available from http://www.ife.ee.ethz.ch/~sailer/linux/pciaudio.html.
+(Timidity patched will also run on OSS/Free).
+
+
+MIDI UART
+---------
+
+The driver supports a simple MIDI UART interface, with
+no ioctl's supported.
+
+
+MIDI synthesizer
+----------------
+
+The card both has an OPL compatible FM synthesizer as well as
+a wavetable synthesizer.
+
+I haven't managed so far to get the OPL synth running.
+
+Using the wavetable synthesizer requires allocating
+1-4MB of physically contiguous memory, which isn't possible
+currently on Linux without ugly hacks like the bigphysarea
+patch. Therefore, the driver doesn't support wavetable
+synthesis.
+
+
+No support from S3
+------------------
+
+I do not get any support from S3. Therefore, the driver
+still has many problems. For example, although the manual
+states that the chip should be able to access the sample
+buffer anywhere in 32bit address space, I haven't managed to
+get it working with buffers above 16M. Therefore, the card
+has the same disadvantages as ISA soundcards.
+
+Given that the card is also very noisy, and if you haven't
+already bought it, you should strongly opt for one of the
+comparatively priced Ensoniq products.
+
+
+Thomas Sailer
+sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch