NM256
上传用户:lgb322
上传日期:2013-02-24
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文件大小:11k
- =======================================================
- Documentation for the NeoMagic 256AV/256ZX sound driver
- =======================================================
- You're looking at version 1.1 of the driver. (Woohoo!) It has been
- successfully tested against the following laptop models:
- Sony Z505S/Z505SX/Z505DX/Z505RX
- Sony F150, F160, F180, F250, F270, F280, PCG-F26
- Dell Latitude CPi, CPt (various submodels)
- There are a few caveats, which is why you should read the entirety of
- this document first.
- This driver was developed without any support or assistance from
- NeoMagic. There is no warranty, expressed, implied, or otherwise. It
- is free software in the public domain; feel free to use it, sell it,
- give it to your best friends, even claim that you wrote it (but why?!)
- but don't go whining to me, NeoMagic, Sony, Dell, or anyone else
- when it blows up your computer.
- Version 1.1 contains a change to try and detect non-AC97 versions of
- the hardware, and not install itself appropriately. It should also
- reinitialize the hardware on an APM resume event, assuming that APM
- was configured into your kernel.
- ============
- Installation
- ============
- Enable the sound drivers, the OSS sound drivers, and then the NM256
- driver. The NM256 driver *must* be configured as a module (it won't
- give you any other choice).
- Next, do the usual "make modules" and "make modules_install".
- Finally, insmod the soundcore, sound and nm256 modules.
- When the nm256 driver module is loaded, you should see a couple of
- confirmation messages in the kernel logfile indicating that it found
- the device (the device does *not* use any I/O ports or DMA channels).
- Now try playing a wav file, futz with the CD-ROM if you have one, etc.
- The NM256 is entirely a PCI-based device, and all the necessary
- information is automatically obtained from the card. It can only be
- configured as a module in a vain attempt to prevent people from
- hurting themselves. It works correctly if it shares an IRQ with
- another device (it normally shares IRQ 9 with the builtin eepro100
- ethernet on the Sony Z505 laptops).
- It does not run the card in any sort of compatibility mode. It will
- not work on laptops that have the SB16-compatible, AD1848-compatible
- or CS4232-compatible codec/mixer; you will want to use the appropriate
- compatible OSS driver with these chipsets. I cannot provide any
- assistance with machines using the SB16, AD1848 or CS4232 compatible
- versions. (The driver now attempts to detect the mixer version, and
- will refuse to load if it believes the hardware is not
- AC97-compatible.)
- The sound support is very basic, but it does include simultaneous
- playback and record capability. The mixer support is also quite
- simple, although this is in keeping with the rather limited
- functionality of the chipset.
- There is no hardware synthesizer available, as the Losedows OPL-3 and
- MIDI support is done via hardware emulation.
- Only three recording devices are available on the Sony: the
- microphone, the CD-ROM input, and the volume device (which corresponds
- to the stereo output). (Other devices may be available on other
- models of laptops.) The Z505 series does not have a builtin CD-ROM,
- so of course the CD-ROM input doesn't work. It does work on laptops
- with a builtin CD-ROM drive.
- The mixer device does not appear to have any tone controls, at least
- on the Z505 series. The mixer module checks for tone controls in the
- AC97 mixer, and will enable them if they are available.
- ==============
- Known problems
- ==============
- * There are known problems with PCMCIA cards and the eepro100 ethernet
- driver on the Z505S/Z505SX/Z505DX. Keep reading.
- * There are also potential problems with using a virtual X display, and
- also problems loading the module after the X server has been started.
- Keep reading.
- * The volume control isn't anywhere near linear. Sorry. This will be
- fixed eventually, when I get sufficiently annoyed with it. (I doubt
- it will ever be fixed now, since I've never gotten sufficiently
- annoyed with it and nobody else seems to care.)
- * There are reports that the CD-ROM volume is very low. Since I do not
- have a CD-ROM equipped laptop, I cannot test this (it's kinda hard to
- do remotely).
- * Only 8 fixed-rate speeds are supported. This is mainly a chipset
- limitation. It may be possible to support other speeds in the future.
- * There is no support for the telephone mixer/codec. There is support
- for a phonein/phoneout device in the mixer driver; whether or not
- it does anything is anyone's guess. (Reports on this would be
- appreciated. You'll have to figure out how to get the phone to
- go off-hook before it'll work, tho.)
- * This driver was not written with any cooperation or support from
- NeoMagic. If you have any questions about this, see their website
- for their official stance on supporting open source drivers.
- ============
- Video memory
- ============
- The NeoMagic sound engine uses a portion of the display memory to hold
- the sound buffer. (Crazy, eh?) The NeoMagic video BIOS sets up a
- special pointer at the top of video RAM to indicate where the top of
- the audio buffer should be placed.
- At the present time XFree86 is apparently not aware of this. It will
- thus write over either the pointer or the sound buffer with abandon.
- (Accelerated-X seems to do a better job here.)
- This implies a few things:
- * Sometimes the NM256 driver has to guess at where the buffer
- should be placed, especially if the module is loaded after the
- X server is started. It's usually correct, but it will consistently
- fail on the Sony F250.
- * Virtual screens greater than 1024x768x16 under XFree86 are
- problematic on laptops with only 2.5MB of screen RAM. This
- includes all of the 256AV-equipped laptops. (Virtual displays
- may or may not work on the 256ZX, which has at least 4MB of
- video RAM.)
- If you start having problems with random noise being output either
- constantly (this is the usual symptom on the F250), or when windows
- are moved around (this is the usual symptom when using a virtual
- screen), the best fix is to
- * Don't use a virtual frame buffer.
- * Make sure you load the NM256 module before the X server is
- started.
- On the F250, it is possible to force the driver to load properly even
- after the XFree86 server is started by doing:
- insmod nm256 buffertop=0x25a800
- This forces the audio buffers to the correct offset in screen RAM.
- One user has reported a similar problem on the Sony F270, although
- others apparently aren't seeing any problems. His suggested command
- is
- insmod nm256 buffertop=0x272800
- =================
- Official WWW site
- =================
- The official site for the NM256 driver is:
- http://www.uglx.org/sony.html
- You should always be able to get the latest version of the driver there,
- and the driver will be supported for the foreseeable future.
- ==============
- Z505RX and IDE
- ==============
- There appears to be a problem with the IDE chipset on the Z505RX; one
- of the symptoms is that sound playback periodically hangs (when the
- disk is accessed). The user reporting the problem also reported that
- enabling all of the IDE chipset workarounds in the kernel solved the
- problem, tho obviously only one of them should be needed--if someone
- can give me more details I would appreciate it.
- ==============================
- Z505S/Z505SX on-board Ethernet
- ==============================
- If you're using the on-board Ethernet Pro/100 ethernet support on the Z505
- series, I strongly encourage you to download the latest eepro100 driver from
- Donald Becker's site:
- ftp://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/linux/drivers/test/eepro100.c
- There was a reported problem on the Z505SX that if the ethernet
- interface is disabled and reenabled while the sound driver is loaded,
- the machine would lock up. I have included a workaround that is
- working satisfactorily. However, you may occasionally see a message
- about "Releasing interrupts, over 1000 bad interrupts" which indicates
- that the workaround is doing its job.
- ==================================
- PCMCIA and the Z505S/Z505SX/Z505DX
- ==================================
- There is also a known problem with the Sony Z505S and Z505SX hanging
- if a PCMCIA card is inserted while the ethernet driver is loaded, or
- in some cases if the laptop is suspended. This is caused by tons of
- spurious IRQ 9s, probably generated from the PCMCIA or ACPI bridges.
- There is currently no fix for the problem that works in every case.
- The only known workarounds are to disable the ethernet interface
- before inserting or removing a PCMCIA card, or with some cards
- disabling the PCMCIA card before ejecting it will also help the
- problem with the laptop hanging when the card is ejected.
- One user has reported that setting the tcic's cs_irq to some value
- other than 9 (like 11) fixed the problem. This doesn't work on my
- Z505S, however--changing the value causes the cardmgr to stop seeing
- card insertions and removals, cards don't seem to work correctly, and
- I still get hangs if a card is inserted when the kernel is booted.
- Using the latest ethernet driver and pcmcia package allows me to
- insert an Adaptec 1480A SlimScsi card without the laptop hanging,
- although I still have to shut down the card before ejecting or
- powering down the laptop. However, similar experiments with a DE-660
- ethernet card still result in hangs when the card is inserted. I am
- beginning to think that the interrupts are CardBus-related, since the
- Adaptec card is a CardBus card, and the DE-660 is not; however, I
- don't have any other CardBus cards to test with.
- ======
- Thanks
- ======
- First, I want to thank everyone (except NeoMagic of course) for their
- generous support and encouragement. I'd like to list everyone's name
- here that replied during the development phase, but the list is
- amazingly long.
- I will be rather unfair and single out a few people, however:
- Justin Maurer, for being the first random net.person to try it,
- and for letting me login to his Z505SX to get it working there
- Edi Weitz for trying out several different versions, and giving
- me a lot of useful feedback
- Greg Rumple for letting me login remotely to get the driver
- functional on the 256ZX, for his assistance on tracking
- down all sorts of random stuff, and for trying out Accel-X
- Zach Brown, for the initial AC97 mixer interface design
- Jeff Garzik, for various helpful suggestions on the AC97
- interface
- "Mr. Bumpy" for feedback on the Z505RX
- Bill Nottingham, for generous assistance in getting the mixer ID
- code working
- =================
- Previous versions
- =================
- Versions prior to 0.3 (aka `noname') had problems with weird artifacts
- in the output and failed to set the recording rate properly. These
- problems have long since been fixed.
- Versions prior to 0.5 had problems with clicks in the output when
- anything other than 16-bit stereo sound was being played, and also had
- periodic clicks when recording.
- Version 0.7 first incorporated support for the NM256ZX chipset, which
- is found on some Dell Latitude laptops (the CPt, and apparently
- some CPi models as well). It also included the generic AC97
- mixer module.
- Version 0.75 renamed all the functions and files with slightly more
- generic names.
- Note that previous versions of this document claimed that recording was
- 8-bit only; it actually has been working for 16-bits all along.