Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Echo Darla/Gina/Layla/... on Linux
From: David Olofson (david_AT_olofson.net)
Date: Mon Mar 24 2003 - 15:35:37 EET
On Friday 21 March 2003 21.47, Paul Davis wrote:
[...]
> >a better interface is a generic firmware loading API (or as
> > generic as one can be made, anyway) with a userspace firmware
> > loader.
>
> agreed. its a rather tricky design however, because on a lot of
> hardware, you have to defer most of the driver initialization until
> the firmware load is complete. the h/w won't even talk to you
> "fully" until you've done this. this means you have a loaded device
> driver that is actually incapable of doing anything until a
> separate user-space application is invoked.
Just to make things more fun, it seems that Echo put some programmable
logic in the external part of Layla. (Only the DSP is on the PCI
card.) Problem is that the external box has it's own power supply,
and a switch on the front panel, and may well be powered off when you
start up the computer. If that happens, the driver must delay the
initialization until the external box is powered on.
BTW, it took years for Echo to actually get this to work under Win32,
and looking at the Layla driver, it seems like the whole
initialization business with that model is a bit flaky. (Well, using
the first few versions of the driver gave me the exact same
impression.)
Did seem to work pretty well on Win32 last time I tried, though, so I
believe the current driver code deals with it.
//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate
.- The Return of Audiality! --------------------------------.
| Free/Open Source Audio Engine for use in Games or Studio. |
| RT and off-line synth. Scripting. Sample accurate timing. |
`-----------------------------------> http://audiality.org -'
--- http://olofson.net --- http://www.reologica.se ---
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Mon Mar 24 2003 - 15:38:42 EET