xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/pcm.4 (revision c807777a43ef2b59786fa8a1a35c1f154fd069e5)
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26.\" $FreeBSD$
27.\"
28.Dd June 3, 1998
29.Dt PCM 4
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
52.Fx
53starting from release 2.2.6.
54See the
55.Xr pnp 4
56manpage for more information. In particular, remember that unit
57numbers for (recognized)
58PnP cards are assigned after the legacy ISA devices, and that the
59actual resources (port, irq and drq) used by the driver are read from
60the PnP configuration and not from the "device pcm0" line.
61So, if you have the following line in your kernel config file:
62.Pp
63.Cd "device pcm0 ..."
64.Pp
65your first PnP audio card will be unit #1, i.e. it will be accessible as
66.Pa /dev/audio1 ,
67.Pa /dev/dsp1 ,
68etc.
69Many applications default to using /dev/audio, but appropriate
70symlinks will be created as a side-effect of the the following command:
71.Pp
72.Cd cd /dev
73.Cd ./MAKEDEV snd1
74.Pp
75The driver works best with WSS/MSS cards, which have a very clean
76architecture and an orthogonal set of features. They also happen to be
77among the cheapest audio cards on the market.
78Other cards such as SB and ESS have a more complex internal
79architecture, and often no documentation available. As a consequence,
80support for these cards is slightly worse.
81.Pp
82The driver does its best to recognize the installed harware and drive
83it correctly, so that you don't have to give too many details in the
84kernel config files. For PnP cards this is actually easy since they
85identify themselves. For legacy ISA cards, the driver first looks for
86MSS cards at addresses 0x530 and 0x604, then for SB
87cards at 0x220 and 0x240 (obviously, unless overridden in the kernel
88config file by specifying an address).
89
90.Sh IOCTL
91The driver supports most of the Voxware ioctls(), and most
92applications work unmodified (including popular mpeg players and linux
93binaries). A few
94differences exist (the most important one is the ability to use
95memory-mapped access to the audio buffers). As a consequence, some
96applications may need to be recompiled with a slightly modified
97audio module.  See /usr/include/machine/soundcard.h for a complete
98list of the supported ioctls.
99
100.Sh SUPPORTED CARDS
101.Pp
102Below we include a list of supported codecs/cards, including, if
103possible, the pnp configuration information where applicable
104(we give default parameters, your actual resources may vary).
105
106.Bl -tag -width 2m  % begin list
107.It CS4237, CS4236, CS4232, CS4231
108.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x534 port2 0x220 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 3"
109.Pp
110All these cards work perfectly in full duplex using the MSS mode.
111This chipset is used, among others, on the A/Open AW35 and AW32, on
112some Intel motherboards, and (the CS4231) on some non-PnP cards.
113.Pp
114The CS4232 is reported as buggy in the Voxware documentation but
115I am not sure if this is true. On one of my Intel motherboards,
116capture does not work simply because the capture DMA channel is
117not wired to the ISA DMA controller.
118
119.It GUSPnP
120.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 port1 0x320 port2 0x32c irq0 5 drq0 7 drq1 5"
121.Pp
122Supported in full duplex using the MSS mode. The GUSPnP does not use a
123real CS4231, and I suspect a bug in the emulation when operating
124with mu-law format. Since the card is discontinued, I did not bother
125to include special code to set the card in "Mode3" (where mu-law is
126known to work) and rather I use U8 format internally, and do the
127conversion in software within the driver. This loses resolution,
128so you should use 16-bit modes with this card when possible.
129
130.It Yamaha OPL-SAx
131.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 port1 0x530 port2 0x388 port3 0x370 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 3"
132.Pp
133Works perfectly in all modes. This chip is used in several PnP cards,
134but also (in non-PnP mode) on motherboards and laptops (e.g. the
135Toshiba Libretto).
136
137.It OPTi931
138.Cd "pnp 1 1 os enable port0 0x534 port2 0x220 port3 0xe0d irq0 10 drq0 1 drq1 6"
139.Pp
140The chip is buggy, but the driver has many workarounds to make it work
141in full duplex because for some time these were the only full duplex
142cards I could find. u-law formats uses U8 format internally because of
143a bug in the chip.
144
145.It SB16, Vibra16C, and old SB16/AWExx cards
146.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 5"
147.Pp
148These codecs have limited full duplex capabilities, by doing 8-bit
149in one direction and 16-bit in the other one. The driver supports this
150mode of operation but keep in mind that it is not a supported mode of
151operation from CreativeLabs.
152
153.It Vibra16X and newer SB16/AWExx cards
154.Cd "pnp 1 0 os enable port0 0x220 irq0 5 drq0 1 drq1 3"
155.Pp
156Recently CreativeLabs has changed the codec (DSP) and the new one is
157somewhat different from the old one. The most apparent difference is
158the use of two 8-bit DMA channels, which seems to have broken our full
159duplex support. Maybe one can achieve full duplex by making use of the
160wavetable to play audio, but since this driver does not support the
161wavetable you have to stick with half duplex.
162
163.It SBPro and clones
164This is the default mode of operation for most other cards. We have
165only limited (and possibly buggy) support for them: 8-bit, half
166duplex, even if the hardware in some cases (e.g. ESS chips) might do more.
167.El
168.Pp
169.Sh DIAGNOSTICS AND TROUBLESHOOTING
170.Bl -tag -width 2m
171.It "This is XXX but LDN Y is disabled"
172.Pp
173This means that the bios has left the PnP device disabled, and you
174have to enable it manually booting with "-c" and giving the pnp
175configuration shown above.
176.It "pcmX: unit not configured, perhaps you want pcmY ?"
177This means that you are using the wrong unit. Generally this happens
178when you are using a PnP card without creating the symlinks to the
179correct unit.  Re-create the symlinks (and possibly also the device
180entries) in the /dev directory to point to the right one.
181
182.It "timeout flushing dbuf_out ..."
183This means a problem in the configuration of the card (specifically,
184in the DMA channel) or (much less likely) in the driver, which has
185not recognized the card correctly. Check the DMA channel used for
186capture.
187
188.It capture does not work
189This usually happens when the input dma channel is misconfigured.
190
191.El
192.Sh BUGS
193Due to lack of documentation,
194SB16 support is not very good. Also, mixer support is not complete,
195and some features of your cards (e.g. global volume control) might not
196be supported on all devices.
197.Sh HISTORY
198The
199.Nm pcm
200device driver first appeared in
201.Fx 2.2.6
202.Sh AUTHORS
203The
204.Nm
205device driver and this manual page were written by
206.An Luigi Rizzo Aq luigi@iet.unipi.it
207