xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/pcm.4 (revision 0640d357f29fb1c0daaaffadd0416c5981413afd)
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2.\" Copyright (c) 1998, Luigi Rizzo
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26.\"	$Id: pcm.4,v 1.1 1998/08/09 19:42:53 jkh Exp $
27.\"
28.Dd June 3, 1998
29.Dt PCM 4 i386
30.Os FreeBSD
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm pcm
33.Nd FreeBSD audio device driver
34.Sh SYNOPSIS
35.Cd "device pcm0 at isa? port? tty irq 5 drq 1 flags 0x15"
36.Sh DESCRIPTION
37The
38.Nm pcm
39driver provides support for varioust ISA sound cards that are compatible
40with the WSS/MSS specs, or with the SBPro and SB16. Only audio
41capture/playback is supported by the driver, and true full duplex
42operation is available on most cards.
43.Pp
44Apart from the usual parameters, the flags field is used to specify
45the secondary DMA channel (generally used for capture in full duplex
46cards). Flags are set to 0 for cards not using a secondary DMA
47channel, or to 0x10 + C to specify channel C.
48.Pp
49PnP audio cards are also supported using the
50.Nm pnp
51support which is available in FreeBSD starting from release 2.2.6.
52See the
53.Xr pnp 4
54manpage for more information. In particular, remember that unit
55numbers for (recognized)
56PnP cards are assigned after the legacy ISA devices, and that the
57actual resources (port, irq and drq) used by the driver are read from
58the PnP configuration and not from the "device pcm0" line.
59So, if you have the following line in your kernel config file:
60.Pp
61.Cd "device pcm0 ..."
62.Pp
63your first PnP audio card will be unit #1, i.e. it will be accessible
64as /dev/audio1, /dev/dsp1, etc.
65Many application default to using /dev/audio, so you can create
66symlinks from /dev/audio etc to the correct device entries as follows:
67.Pp
68.Cd cd /dev
69.Cd rm audio dsp dspW mixer
70.Cd ./MAKEDEV snd1
71.Cd ln -s audio1 audio
72.Cd ln -s dsp1 dsp
73.Cd ln -s dspW1 dspW
74.Cd ln -s mixer1 mixer
75.Pp
76The driver works best with WSS/MSS cards, which have a very clean
77architecture and an orthogonal set of features. They also happen to be
78among the cheapest audio cards on the market.
79Other cards such as SB and ESS have a more complex internal
80architecture, and often no documentation available. As a consequence,
81support for these cards is slightly worse.
82.Pp
83The driver does its best to recognize the installed harware and drive
84it correctly, so that you don't have to give too many details in the
85kernel config files. For PnP cards this is actually easy since they
86identify themselves. For legacy ISA cards, the driver first looks for
87MSS cards at addresses 0x530 and 0x604, then for SB
88cards at 0x220 and 0x240 (obviously, unless overridden in the kernel
89config file by specifying an address).
90
91.Sh IOCTL
92The driver supports most of the Voxware ioctls(), and most
93applications work unmodified (including popular mpeg players and linux
94binaries). A few
95differences exist (the most important one is the ability to use
96memory-mapped access to the audio buffers). As a consequence, some
97applications may need to be recompiled with a slightly modified
98audio module.  See /usr/include/machine/soundcard.h for a complete
99list of the supported ioctls.
100
101.Sh SUPPORTED CARDS
102.Pp
103Below we include a list of supported codecs/cards, including, if
104possible, the pnp configuration information where applicable
105(we give default parameters, your actual resources may vary).
106
107.Bl -tag -width 2m  % begin list
108.It CS4237, CS4236, CS4232, CS4231
109.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x534 port2 0x220 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 3"
110.Pp
111All these cards work perfectly in full duplex using the MSS mode.
112This chipset is used, among others, on the A/Open AW35 and AW32, on
113some Intel motherboards, and (the CS4231) on some non-PnP cards.
114.Pp
115The CS4232 is reported as buggy in the Voxware documentation but
116I am not sure if this is true. On one of my Intel motherboards,
117capture does not work simply because the capture DMA channel is
118not wired to the ISA DMA controller.
119
120.It GUSPnP
121.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 port1 0x320 port2 0x32c irq0 5 drq0 7 drq1 5"
122.Pp
123Supported in full duplex using the MSS mode. The GUSPnP does not use a
124real CS4231, and I suspect a bug in the emulation when operating
125with mu-law format. Since the card is discontinued, I did not bother
126to include special code to set the card in "Mode3" (where mu-law is
127known to work) and rather I use U8 format internally, and do the
128conversion in software within the driver. This loses resolution,
129so you should use 16-bit modes with this card when possible.
130
131.It Yamaha OPL-SAx
132.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 port1 0x530 port2 0x388 port3 0x370 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 3"
133.Pp
134Works perfectly in all modes. This chip is used in several PnP cards,
135but also (in non-PnP mode) on motherboards and laptops (e.g. the
136Toshiba Libretto).
137
138.It OPTi931
139.Cd "pnp 1 1 os enable port0 0x534 port2 0x220 port3 0xe0d irq0 10 drq0 1 drq1 6"
140.Pp
141The chip is buggy, but the driver has many workarounds to make it work
142in full duplex because for some time these were the only full duplex
143cards I could find. u-law formats uses U8 format internally because of
144a bug in the chip.
145
146.It SB16, Vibra16C, and old SB16/AWExx cards
147.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 5"
148.Pp
149These codecs have limited full duplex capabilities, by doing 8-bit
150in one direction and 16-bit in the other one. The driver supports this
151mode of operation but keep in mind that it is not a supported mode of
152operation from CreativeLabs.
153
154.It Vibra16X and newer SB16/AWExx cards
155.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 3"
156.Pp
157Recently CreativeLabs has changed the codec (DSP) and the new one is
158somewhat different from the old one. The most apparent difference is
159the use of two 8-bit DMA channels, which seems to have broken our full
160duplex support. Maybe one can achieve full duplex by making use of the
161wavetable to play audio, but since this driver does not support the
162wavetable you have to stick with half duplex.
163
164.It SBPro and clones
165This is the default mode of operation for most other cards. We have
166only limited (and possibly buggy) support for them: 8-bit, half
167duplex, even if the hardware in some cases (e.g. ESS chips) might do more.
168.El
169.Pp
170.Sh DIAGNOSTICS AND TROUBLESHOOTING
171.Bl -tag -width 2m
172.It "This is XXX but LDN Y is disabled"
173.Pp
174This means that the bios has left the PnP device disabled, and you
175have to enable it manually booting with "-c" and giving the pnp
176configuration shown above.
177.It "pcmX: unit not configured, perhaps you want pcmY ?"
178This means that you are using the wrong unit. Generally this happens
179when you are using a PnP card without creating the symlinks to the
180correct unit.  Re-create the symlinks (and possibly also the device
181entries) in the /dev directory to point to the right one.
182
183.It "timeout flushing dbuf_out ..."
184This means a problem in the configuration of the card (specifically,
185in the DMA channel) or (much less likely) in the driver, which has
186not recognized the card correctly. Check the DMA channel used for
187capture.
188
189.It capture does not work
190This usually happens when the input dma channel is misconfigured.
191
192.El
193.Sh BUGS
194Due to lack of documentation,
195SB16 support is not very good. Also, mixer support is not complete,
196and some features of your cards (e.g. global volume control) might not
197be supported on all devices.
198.Sh HISTORY
199The
200.Nm pcm
201device driver first appeared in
202.Fx 2.2.6
203.Sh AUTHOR
204The
205.Nm
206device driver and this manual page were written by Luigi Rizzo
207(luigi@iet.unipi.it)
208