On Tue, 12 Jan 1999, Jacob Hawley wrote:
> Not an easy question to answer.
>
> Short Answer:
> Under DOS/Windows it is about 98% compatible.
>
> Long Answer:
> The PCI bus does not support ISA IRQ/DMA requests. In addition, the I/O ranges
> that are typically used for Sound Blaster (220h - Basic Audio, 680h - WaveTable,
> 200h for Joystick) are not supported in the PCI config space.
>
[...]
> We have found a couple of instances where the support
> does not work properly, these are primarily with VIA PCI chipsets.
>
Yes, but VIA chipsets seem to have problems with the ISA cards too ...
> Needless to say Sound Blaster wouldn't work on non-Intel platforms anyway,
> because the I/O ranges would not be applicable in an Alpha, CISC or RICS
> processors.
For those platforms you have total control anyway, unlike the dos/windows
mess where you can talk directly to the hardware should you be so
inclined.
Basically you can (and IMHO should) use the hardware abstraction inherent
in the OS to wave goodbye to the need to support the legacy interfaces as
only the kernel can talk to the hardware.
When I ask the question "Is it SoundBlaster<whatever> compatable ?" (and I
expect most of the other people asking from a linux point of view mean
this too), I really mean "If I configure my kernel to talk to this card as
a SoundBlaster<whatever>, will it act as one ?". The answer for some
cards is "If you say this magic incantation at it first, then yes", but in
this case the answer seems to be "No".
Hmm, I just thought of something... Can the card be configured to act as
a SoundBlaster<whatever> compatable, _but_ with it's ports appearing at
0xXXXX (ie in the PCI range). Because we don't have problems with that
(though the SoundBlaster<whatever> driver may need tweaked), because of
our abstractions.
If that is the case (which would make sense from a legacy support point of
view as you then need to do less tweaking of the data "stream" in the
dos/windows driver), you would be able to have a basic audio driver out
the door and in the kernel in a week and then release more advanced
support when it's ready.
> This is a fundamental problem that needs to be looked at in any
> driver the Creative develops, it is very difficult for Creative to walk away
> from "Sound Blaster Compatibility".
>
Which is moot with hardware abstraction ;).
> Jake
>
Bryn
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