Re: question about sblive and linux

Thomas Wouters (thomas@xs4all.nl)
Wed, 13 Jan 1999 17:17:25 +0100


On Wed, Jan 13, 1999 at 10:05:26AM +0100, Helge Hafting wrote:
> > So, what we end up having to do is a lot of work to emulate and trap these I/O
> > ranges, and to respond to the IRQ/DMA requests all the while maintaining the
> None of this emulation will be necessary under linux. Because linux programs,
> even games, use the device drivers exclusively.
> I hope a linux driver will be written to use the chip as-is, and not
> do any sort of useless emulation that only waste CPU time.

> Emulation may be useful for those who run dos games with DOSEMU/WINE, but
> certainly
> not for any of the many linux programs that use sound. Such emulation
> should be part of those packages, not a driver.

Nah. DOSemu, at least, emulates an SB16 card, by using the normal linux
sound interface (IIRC anyway). Perhaps it is/was possible to use the SB16
directly from inside DOSemu, bypassing the normal driver, but that'd be very
errorprone behaviour anyway. Not sure about WINE, but i dont see why one
would give direct access to soundcard hardware from inside DOSemu or WINE if
one could use the native linux drivers. Rather spend the effort writing a
linux driver for that sound card :)

> - Writing a driver supporting every feature takes time - this is understood.
> But there is no reason for delaying the release until that.
> I recommend going for the basic /dev/dsp (D/A A/D converters) first,
> and release a beta as soon as that works. Then make new releases whenever
> a new feature (midi, mixer, ...) is completed.

It's worse than that... Linux needs to standardize 'advanced sound options'
some way, provide an API for it, which includes room for future crufty
soundfeatures. I believe there is work going on in that area, haven't been
reading my Freshmeat faithfully lately, due to lack of time :P

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