patch-2.3.35 linux/Documentation/sound/Maestro

• Lines: 99
• Date: Sun Dec 26 19:34:04 1999
• Orig file: v2.3.34/linux/Documentation/sound/Maestro
• Orig date: Wed Dec 31 16:00:00 1969

diff -u --recursive --new-file v2.3.34/linux/Documentation/sound/Maestro linux/Documentation/sound/Maestro
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+	An OSS/Lite Driver for the ESS Maestro family of sound cards
+
+			Zach Brown, December 1999
+
+Driver Status and Availability
+------------------------------
+
+The most recent version of this driver will hopefully always be available at
+	http://people.redhat.com/zab/maestro/
+
+I will try and maintain the most recent stable version of the driver
+in both the stable and development kernel lines.
+
+ESS Maestro Chip Family
+-----------------------
+
+There are 3 main variants of the ESS Maestro PCI sound chip.  The first
+is the Maestro 1.  It was originally produced by Platform Tech as the
+'AGOGO'.  It can be recognized by Platform Tech's PCI ID 0x1285 with
+0x0100 as the device ID.  It was put on some sound boards and a few laptops.  
+ESS bought the design and cleaned it up as the Maestro 2.  This starts
+their marking with the ESS vendor ID 0x125D and the 'year' device IDs.
+The Maestro 2 claims 0x1968 while the Maestro 2e has 0x1978.
+
+The various families of Maestro are mostly identical as far as this 
+driver is concerned.  It doesn't touch the DSP parts that differ (though
+it could for FM synthesis)
+
+Driver OSS Behavior
+--------------------
+
+This OSS driver exports /dev/mixer and /dev/dsp to applications, which
+mostly adhere to the OSS spec.   This driver doesn't register itself
+with /dev/sndstat, so don't expect information to appear there.
+
+The /dev/dsp device exported behaves almost as expected.  Playback is
+supported in all the various lovely formats.  8/16bit stereo/mono from
+8khz to 48khz, and mmap()ing for playback behaves.  Capture/recording
+is limited due to oddities with the Maestro hardware.  One can only
+record in 16bit stereo.  For recording the maestro uses non interleaved
+stereo buffers so that mmap()ing the incoming data does not result in
+a ring buffer of LRLR data.  mmap()ing of the read buffers is therefore
+disallowed until this can be cleaned up.
+
+/dev/mixer is an interface to the AC'97 codec on the Maestro.  It is
+worth noting that there are a variety of AC'97s that can be wired to
+the Maestro.  Which is used is entirely up to the hardware implementor.
+This should only be visible to the user by the presence, or lack, of
+'Bass' and 'Treble' sliders in the mixer.  Not all AC'97s have them.
+
+The driver doesn't support MIDI or FM playback at the moment.  Typically
+the Maestro is wired to an MPU MIDI chip, but some hardware implementations
+don't.  We need to assemble a white list of hardware implementations that
+have MIDI wired properly before we can claim to support it safely.
+
+Compiling and Installing
+------------------------
+
+With the drivers inclusion into the kernel, compiling and installing
+is the same as most OSS/Lite modular sound drivers.  Compilation
+of the driver is enabled through the CONFIG_SOUND_MAESTRO variable
+in the config system.  
+
+It may be modular or statically linked.  If it is modular it should be
+installed with the rest of the modules for the kernel on the system.
+Typically this will be in /lib/modules/ somewhere.  'alias sound maestro'
+should also be added to your module configs (typically /etc/conf.modules)
+if you're using modular OSS/Lite sound and want to default to using a
+maestro chip.
+
+As this is a PCI device, the module does not need to be informed of
+any IO or IRQ resources it should use, it devines these from the
+system.  Somtimes, on sucky PCs, the BIOS fails to allocated resources
+for the maestro.  This will result in a message like:
+	maestro: PCI subsystem reports IRQ 0, this might not be correct.
+from the kernel.  Should this happen the sound chip most likely will
+not operate correctly.  To solve this one has to dig through their BIOS
+(typically entered by hitting a hot key at boot time) and figure out
+what magic needs to happen so that the BIOS will reward the maestro with
+an IRQ.  This operation is incredibly system specific, so you're on your
+own.  Sometimes the magic lies in 'PNP Capable Operating System' settings.
+
+There are very few options to the driver.  One is 'debug' which will 
+tell the driver to print minimal debugging information as it runs.  This
+can be collected with 'dmesg' or through the klogd daemon.
+
+The other, more interesting option, is 'dsps_order'.  Typically at
+install time the driver will only register one available /dev/dsp device
+for its use.  The 'dsps_order' module parameter allows for more devices
+to be allocated, as a power of two.  Up to 4 devices can be registered
+( dsps_order=2 ).  These devices act as fully distinct units and use
+separate channels in the maestro.
+
+.. more details ..
+-----------------
+
+drivers/sound/maestro.c contains comments that hopefully explain
+the maestro implementation.