patch-2.2.0-pre8 linux/Documentation/sound/README.modules

• Lines: 100
• Date: Sun Jan 17 18:23:01 1999
• Orig file: v2.2.0-pre7/linux/Documentation/sound/README.modules
• Orig date: Wed Dec 31 16:00:00 1969

diff -u --recursive --new-file v2.2.0-pre7/linux/Documentation/sound/README.modules linux/Documentation/sound/README.modules
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+Building a modular sound driver
+================================
+
+  The following information is current as of linux-2.1.85. Check the other
+readme files, especially README.OSS, for information not specific to
+making sound modular.
+
+  First, configure your kernel. This is an idea of what you should be
+setting in the sound section:
+
+<M> Sound card support 
+
+<M> 100% Sound Blaster compatibles (SB16/32/64, ESS, Jazz16) support 
+
+  I have SoundBlaster. Select your card from the list.
+
+<M> Generic OPL2/OPL3 FM synthesizer support 
+<M> FM synthesizer (YM3812/OPL-3) support 
+
+  If you don't set these, you will probably find you can play .wav files
+but not .midi. As the help for them says, set them unless you know your
+card does not use one of these chips for FM support.
+
+  Once you are configured, make zlilo, modules, modules_install; reboot.
+Note that it is no longer necessary or possible to configure sound in the
+drivers/sound dir. Now one simply configures and makes one's kernel and
+modules in the usual way.
+
+ Then, add to your /etc/modules.conf or /etc/conf.modules something like:
+
+alias char-major-14 sb
+post-install sb /sbin/modprobe "-k" "adlib_card"
+options sb io=0x220 irq=7 dma=1 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x330
+options adlib_card io=0x388     # FM synthesizer
+
+  The effect of this is that the sound driver and all necessary bits and
+pieces autoload on demand, assuming you use kerneld (a sound choice) and
+autoclean when not in use. Also, options for the device drivers are
+set. They will not work without them. Change as appropriate for your card.
+If you are not yet using the very cool kerneld, you will have to "modprobe
+-k sb" yourself to get things going. Eventually things may be fixed so
+that this kludgery is not necessary; for the time being, it seems to work
+well.
+
+  Replace 'sb' with the driver for your card, and give it the right
+options. To find the filename of the driver, look in
+/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/misc. Mine looks like:
+
+adlib_card.o # This is the generic OPLx driver
+opl3.o # The OPL3 driver
+sb.o # <<The SoundBlaster driver. Yours may differ.>>
+sound.o # The sound driver
+uart401.o # Used by sb, maybe other cards
+
+ Whichever card you have, try feeding it the options that would be the
+default if you were making the driver wired, not as modules. You can look
+at the init_module() code for the card to see what args are expected.
+
+ Note that at present there is no way to configure the io, irq and other
+parameters for the modular drivers as one does for the wired drivers.. One
+needs to pass the modules the necessary parameters as arguments, either
+with /etc/modules.conf or with command-line args to modprobe, e.g.
+
+modprobe -k sb io=0x220 irq=7 dma=1 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x330
+modprobe -k adlib_card io=0x388
+
+ recommend using /etc/modules.conf.
+
+Persistent DMA Buffers:
+
+The sound modules normally allocate DMA buffers during open() and
+deallocate them during close(). Linux can often have problems allocating
+DMA buffers for ISA cards on machines with more than 16MB RAM. This is
+because ISA DMA buffers must exist below the 16MB boundry and it is quite
+possible that we can't find a large enough free block in this region after
+the machine has been running for any amount of time. The way to avoid this
+problem is to allocate the DMA buffers during module load and deallocate
+them when the module is unloaded. For this to be effective we need to load
+the sound modules right after the kernel boots, either manually or by an
+init script, and keep them around until we shut down. This is a little
+wasteful of RAM, but it guarantees that sound always works.
+
+To make the sound driver use persistent DMA buffers we need to pass the
+sound.o module a "dmabuf=1" command-line argument. This is normally done
+in /etc/conf.modules (or the more proper /etc/modules.conf) like so:
+
+options sound		dmabuf=1
+
+If you have 16MB or less RAM or a PCI sound card, this is wasteful and
+unnecessary. It is possible that machine with 16MB or less RAM will find
+this option useful, but if your machine is so memory-starved that it
+cannot find a 64K block free, you will be wasting even more RAM by keeping
+the sound modules loaded and the DMA buffers allocated when they are not
+needed. The proper solution is to upgrade your RAM. But you do also have
+this improper solution as well. Use it wisely.
+
+  I'm afraid I know nothing about anything but my setup, being more of a
+text-mode guy anyway. If you have options for other cards or other helpful
+hints, send them to me, Jim Bray, jb@as220.org, http://as220.org/jb.