xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/pcm.4 (revision 4cf49a43559ed9fdad601bdcccd2c55963008675)
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26.\" $FreeBSD$
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? irq 5 drq 1 flags 0x15"
36.Sh DESCRIPTION
37The
38.Nm pcm
39driver provides support for various 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 applications default to using /dev/audio, but appropriate
66symlinks will be created as a side-effect of the the following command:
67.Pp
68.Cd cd /dev
69.Cd ./MAKEDEV snd1
70.Pp
71The driver works best with WSS/MSS cards, which have a very clean
72architecture and an orthogonal set of features. They also happen to be
73among the cheapest audio cards on the market.
74Other cards such as SB and ESS have a more complex internal
75architecture, and often no documentation available. As a consequence,
76support for these cards is slightly worse.
77.Pp
78The driver does its best to recognize the installed harware and drive
79it correctly, so that you don't have to give too many details in the
80kernel config files. For PnP cards this is actually easy since they
81identify themselves. For legacy ISA cards, the driver first looks for
82MSS cards at addresses 0x530 and 0x604, then for SB
83cards at 0x220 and 0x240 (obviously, unless overridden in the kernel
84config file by specifying an address).
85
86.Sh IOCTL
87The driver supports most of the Voxware ioctls(), and most
88applications work unmodified (including popular mpeg players and linux
89binaries). A few
90differences exist (the most important one is the ability to use
91memory-mapped access to the audio buffers). As a consequence, some
92applications may need to be recompiled with a slightly modified
93audio module.  See /usr/include/machine/soundcard.h for a complete
94list of the supported ioctls.
95
96.Sh SUPPORTED CARDS
97.Pp
98Below we include a list of supported codecs/cards, including, if
99possible, the pnp configuration information where applicable
100(we give default parameters, your actual resources may vary).
101
102.Bl -tag -width 2m  % begin list
103.It CS4237, CS4236, CS4232, CS4231
104.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x534 port2 0x220 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 3"
105.Pp
106All these cards work perfectly in full duplex using the MSS mode.
107This chipset is used, among others, on the A/Open AW35 and AW32, on
108some Intel motherboards, and (the CS4231) on some non-PnP cards.
109.Pp
110The CS4232 is reported as buggy in the Voxware documentation but
111I am not sure if this is true. On one of my Intel motherboards,
112capture does not work simply because the capture DMA channel is
113not wired to the ISA DMA controller.
114
115.It GUSPnP
116.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 port1 0x320 port2 0x32c irq0 5 drq0 7 drq1 5"
117.Pp
118Supported in full duplex using the MSS mode. The GUSPnP does not use a
119real CS4231, and I suspect a bug in the emulation when operating
120with mu-law format. Since the card is discontinued, I did not bother
121to include special code to set the card in "Mode3" (where mu-law is
122known to work) and rather I use U8 format internally, and do the
123conversion in software within the driver. This loses resolution,
124so you should use 16-bit modes with this card when possible.
125
126.It Yamaha OPL-SAx
127.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 port1 0x530 port2 0x388 port3 0x370 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 3"
128.Pp
129Works perfectly in all modes. This chip is used in several PnP cards,
130but also (in non-PnP mode) on motherboards and laptops (e.g. the
131Toshiba Libretto).
132
133.It OPTi931
134.Cd "pnp 1 1 os enable port0 0x534 port2 0x220 port3 0xe0d irq0 10 drq0 1 drq1 6"
135.Pp
136The chip is buggy, but the driver has many workarounds to make it work
137in full duplex because for some time these were the only full duplex
138cards I could find. u-law formats uses U8 format internally because of
139a bug in the chip.
140
141.It SB16, Vibra16C, and old SB16/AWExx cards
142.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 5"
143.Pp
144These codecs have limited full duplex capabilities, by doing 8-bit
145in one direction and 16-bit in the other one. The driver supports this
146mode of operation but keep in mind that it is not a supported mode of
147operation from CreativeLabs.
148
149.It Vibra16X and newer SB16/AWExx cards
150.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 3"
151.Pp
152Recently CreativeLabs has changed the codec (DSP) and the new one is
153somewhat different from the old one. The most apparent difference is
154the use of two 8-bit DMA channels, which seems to have broken our full
155duplex support. Maybe one can achieve full duplex by making use of the
156wavetable to play audio, but since this driver does not support the
157wavetable you have to stick with half duplex.
158
159.It SBPro and clones
160This is the default mode of operation for most other cards. We have
161only limited (and possibly buggy) support for them: 8-bit, half
162duplex, even if the hardware in some cases (e.g. ESS chips) might do more.
163.El
164.Pp
165.Sh DIAGNOSTICS AND TROUBLESHOOTING
166.Bl -tag -width 2m
167.It "This is XXX but LDN Y is disabled"
168.Pp
169This means that the bios has left the PnP device disabled, and you
170have to enable it manually booting with "-c" and giving the pnp
171configuration shown above.
172.It "pcmX: unit not configured, perhaps you want pcmY ?"
173This means that you are using the wrong unit. Generally this happens
174when you are using a PnP card without creating the symlinks to the
175correct unit.  Re-create the symlinks (and possibly also the device
176entries) in the /dev directory to point to the right one.
177
178.It "timeout flushing dbuf_out ..."
179This means a problem in the configuration of the card (specifically,
180in the DMA channel) or (much less likely) in the driver, which has
181not recognized the card correctly. Check the DMA channel used for
182capture.
183
184.It capture does not work
185This usually happens when the input dma channel is misconfigured.
186
187.El
188.Sh BUGS
189Due to lack of documentation,
190SB16 support is not very good. Also, mixer support is not complete,
191and some features of your cards (e.g. global volume control) might not
192be supported on all devices.
193.Sh HISTORY
194The
195.Nm pcm
196device driver first appeared in
197.Fx 2.2.6
198.Sh AUTHORS
199The
200.Nm
201device driver and this manual page were written by
202.An Luigi Rizzo Aq luigi@iet.unipi.it
203