root/drivers/sound/Readme

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Version 3.5-beta11 release notes
--------------------------------

Most up to date information about this driver is available from 
http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/voxware.




Please read the SOUND-HOWTO (available from sunsite.unc.edu and other Linux ftp 
sites). It gives instructions about using sound with Linux. It's bit out of
date but still very useful. Information about bug fixes and such things
is available from the web page (see below).

New Programmer's Guide is currently under work (Feb/March 96). Please
check http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/voxware for more info.

   ====================================================
-  THIS VERSION ____REQUIRES____ Linux 1.3.70 OR LATER.
   ====================================================

It's very likely that this driver version is incompatible with
Linux versions later than 2.x.

Packages "snd-util-3.5.tar.gz" and "snd-data-0.1.tar.Z"
contain usefull utilities to be used with this driver.

If you are looking for the installation instructions, please
look at Readme.linux.

Supported soundcards
--------------------

See Readme.cards.

Please check http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/voxware if you don't find
your soundcard there.

Contributors
------------

This driver contains code by several contributors. In addition several other
persons have given usefull suggestions. The following is a list of major
contributors. (I could have forgotten some names.)

        Craig Metz      1/2 of the PAS16 Mixer and PCM support
        Rob Hooft       Volume computation algorithm for the FM synth.
        Mika Liljeberg  uLaw encoding and decoding routines
        Jeff Tranter    Linux SOUND HOWTO document
        Greg Lee        Volume computation algorithm for the GUS and
                        lot's of valuable suggestions.
        Andy Warner     ISC port
        Jim Lowe,
        Amancio Hasty Jr        FreeBSD/NetBSD port
        Anders Baekgaard        Bughunting and valuable suggestions.
        Joerg Schubert  SB16 DSP support.
        Andrew Robinson Improvements to the GUS driver
        Megens SA       MIDI recording for SB and SB Pro.
        Mikael Nordqvist  Linear volume support for GUS and
                          nonblocking /dev/sequencer.
        Ian Hartas              SVR4.2 port
        Markus Aroharju and
        Risto Kankkunen         Major contributions to the mixer support
                                of GUS v3.7.
        Hunyue Yau      Mixer support for SG NX Pro.
        Marc Hoffman    PSS support.
        Rainer Vranken  Initialization for Jazz16 (ProSonic, MV3D, SM Wave).
        Peter Trattler  Initial version of loadable module support for Linux.
        JRA Gibson      16 bit mode for Jazz16
        Davor Jadrijevic MAD16 support
        Gregor Hoffleit Mozart support
        Riccardo Facchetti Audio Excel DSP 16 (aedsp16) support
        James Hightower Spotting a tiny but important bug in CS423x support.

There are propably many other names missing. If you have sent me some
patches and your name is not in the above list, please inform me.

Sponsors etc.
-------------

The following companies have greatly helped development of this driver 
in form of a free copy of their product:

Novell, Inc.            UnixWare personal edition + SDK
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.  A SCO OpenServer + SDK
Ensoniq Corp,           a SoundScape card and extensive amount of assistance
MediaTriX Peripherals Inc, a AudioTriX Pro card + SDK
Acer, Inc.              a pair of AcerMagic S23 cards.

In addition the following companies have provided me sufficial amount
of technical information at least some of their products (free or $$$):

Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd.
Media Vision Inc.
Analog Devices Inc.
Logitech Inc.
Aztech Labs Inc.
Crystal Semiconductor Corporation,
Integrated Circuit Systems Inc.
OAK Technology
OPTi
Ad Lib Inc. ($$)
Music Quest Inc. ($$)
Creative Labs ($$$)

If you have some problems
=========================

Read the sound HOWTO (sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/...?).
Also look at the home page (http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/voxware). It may
contain info about some recent bug fixes.

It's likely that you have some problems when trying to use the sound driver
first time. Soundcards don't have standard configuration so there are no
good default configuration to use. Please try to use same I/O, DMA and IRQ
values for the soundcard than with DOS.

If you get an error message when trying to use the driver, please look
at /var/adm/messages for more verbose error message.


In general the easiest way to diagnoze problems is to do "cat /dev/sndstat".

If you get an error message, there are some problems with the driver setup:

        - "No such file or directory" tells that the device files for
        the sound driver are missing. Use the script at the end of
        linux/drivers/sound/Readme.linux to create them.

        - "No such device" telss that the sound driver is not in the kernel.
        You have to reconfigure and recompile the kernel to have the sound
        driver. Compiling the driver doesn't help alone. You have to boot
        with the newly compiled one before the driver becomes active.
        The Linux-HOWTO should help in this step.

The following errors are likely with /dev/dsp and /dev/audio.

        - "No such device or address". This error message should not happen
        with /dev/sndstat but it's possible with the other sound devices.
        This error indicates that there are no suitable hardware for the
        device file or the sound driver has been compiled without support for
        this particular device. For example /dev/audio and /dev/dsp will not
        work if "digitized voice support" was not enabled during "make config".
        
        - "Device or resource busy". Propably the IRQ (or DMA) channel 
        required by the soundcard is in use by some other device/driver.

        - "I/O error". Almost certainly (99%) it's an IRQ or DMA conflict.
        Look at the kernel messages in /var/adm/notice for more info.

        - "Invalid argument". The application is calling ioctl()
        with impossible parameters. Check that the application is
        for sound driver version 2.X or later.

In general the printout of of /dev/sndstat should tell what is the problem.
It's possible that there are bugs in the sound driver but 99% of the problems
reported to me are caused by somehow incorrect setup during "make config".

Best regards,

Hannu

Hannu Savolainen
hannu@voxware.pp.fi     
(Please check http:/personal.eunet.fi/pp/voxware before mailing me).

Snail mail:     Hannu Savolainen
                Hiekkalaiturintie 3 A 8
                00980 Helsinki
                Finland

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