Via 686 Audio Driver for Linux
Jeff
Garzik
1999-2001
Jeff Garzik
This documentation is free software; you can redistribute
it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
MA 02111-1307 USA
For more details see the file COPYING in the source
distribution of Linux.
Introduction
The Via VT82C686A "super southbridge" chips contain
AC97-compatible audio logic which features dual 16-bit stereo
PCM sound channels (full duplex), plus a third PCM channel intended for use
in hardware-assisted FM synthesis.
The current Linux kernel audio driver for this family of chips
supports audio playback and recording, but hardware-assisted
FM features, and hardware buffer direct-access (mmap)
support are not yet available.
This driver supports any Linux kernel version after 2.4.10.
Please send bug reports to the mailing list linux-via@gtf.org.
To subscribe, e-mail majordomo@gtf.org with
subscribe linux-via
in the body of the message.
Driver Installation
To use this audio driver, select the
CONFIG_SOUND_VIA82CXXX option in the section Sound during kernel configuration.
Follow the usual kernel procedures for rebuilding the kernel,
or building and installing driver modules.
To make this driver the default audio driver, you can add the
following to your /etc/conf.modules file:
alias sound via82cxxx_audio
Note that soundcore and ac97_codec support modules
are also required for working audio, in addition to
the via82cxxx_audio module itself.
Submitting a bug report
Description of problem
Describe the application you were using to play/record sound, and how
to reproduce the problem.
Diagnostic output
Obtain the via-audio-diag diagnostics program from
http://sf.net/projects/gkernel/ and provide a dump of the
audio chip's registers while the problem is occurring. Sample command line:
./via-audio-diag -aps > diag-output.txt
Driver debug output
Define VIA_DEBUG at the beginning of the driver, then capture and email
the kernel log output. This can be viewed in the system kernel log (if
enabled), or via the dmesg program. Sample command line:
dmesg > /tmp/dmesg-output.txt
Bigger kernel message buffer
If you wish to increase the size of the buffer displayed by dmesg, then
change the LOG_BUF_LEN macro at the top of linux/kernel/printk.c, recompile
your kernel, and pass the LOG_BUF_LEN value to dmesg. Sample command line with
LOG_BUF_LEN == 32768:
dmesg -s 32768 > /tmp/dmesg-output.txt
Known Bugs And Assumptions
Low volume
Volume too low on many systems. Workaround: use mixer program
such as xmixer to increase volume.
Thanks
Via for providing e-mail support, specs, and NDA'd source code.
MandrakeSoft for providing hacking time.
AC97 mixer interface fixes and debugging by Ron Cemer roncemer@gte.net.
Rui Sousa rui.sousa@conexant.com, for bugfixing
MMAP support, and several other notable fixes that resulted from
his hard work and testing.
Adrian Cox adrian@humboldt.co.uk, for bugfixing
MMAP support, and several other notable fixes that resulted from
his hard work and testing.
Thomas Sailer for further bugfixes.
Random Notes
Two /proc pseudo-files provide diagnostic information. This is generally
not useful to most users. Power users can disable CONFIG_SOUND_VIA82CXXX_PROCFS,
and remove the /proc support code. Once
version 2.0.0 is released, the /proc support code will be disabled by
default. Available /proc pseudo-files:
/proc/driver/via/0/info
/proc/driver/via/0/ac97
This driver by default supports all PCI audio devices which report
a vendor id of 0x1106, and a device id of 0x3058. Subsystem vendor
and device ids are not examined.
GNU indent formatting options:
-kr -i8 -ts8 -br -ce -bap -sob -l80 -pcs -cs -ss -bs -di1 -nbc -lp -psl
Via has graciously donated e-mail support and source code to help further
the development of this driver. Their assistance has been invaluable
in the design and coding of the next major version of this driver.
The Via audio chip apparently provides a second PCM scatter-gather
DMA channel just for FM data, but does not have a full hardware MIDI
processor. I haven't put much thought towards a solution here, but it
might involve using SoftOSS midi wave table, or simply disabling MIDI
support altogether and using the FM PCM channel as a second (input? output?)
Driver ChangeLog
Version 1.9.1
DSP read/write bugfixes from Thomas Sailer.
Add new PCI id for single-channel use of Via 8233.
Other bug fixes, tweaks, new ioctls.
Version 1.1.15
Support for variable fragment size and variable fragment number (Rui
Sousa)
Fixes for the SPEED, STEREO, CHANNELS, FMT ioctls when in read &
write mode (Rui Sousa)
Mmaped sound is now fully functional. (Rui Sousa)
Make sure to enable PCI device before reading any of its PCI
config information. (fixes potential hotplug problems)
Clean up code a bit and add more internal function documentation.
AC97 codec access fixes (Adrian Cox)
Big endian fixes (Adrian Cox)
MIDI support (Adrian Cox)
Detect and report locked-rate AC97 codecs. If your hardware only
supports 48Khz (locked rate), then your recording/playback software
must upsample or downsample accordingly. The hardware cannot do it.
Use new pci_request_regions and pci_disable_device functions in
kernel 2.4.6.
Version 1.1.14
Use VM_RESERVE when available, to eliminate unnecessary page faults.
Version 1.1.12
mmap bug fixes from Linus.
Version 1.1.11
Many more bug fixes. mmap enabled by default, but may still be buggy.
Uses new and spiffy method of mmap'ing the DMA buffer, based
on a suggestion from Linus.
Version 1.1.10
Many bug fixes. mmap enabled by default, but may still be buggy.
Version 1.1.9
Redesign and rewrite audio playback implementation. (faster and smaller, hopefully)
Implement recording and full duplex (DSP_CAP_DUPLEX) support.
Make procfs support optional.
Quick interrupt status check, to lessen overhead in interrupt
sharing situations.
Add mmap(2) support. Disabled for now, it is still buggy and experimental.
Surround all syscalls with a semaphore for cheap and easy SMP protection.
Fix bug in channel shutdown (hardware channel reset) code.
Remove unnecessary spinlocks (better performance).
Eliminate "unknown AFMT" message by using a different method
of selecting the best AFMT_xxx sound sample format for use.
Support for realtime hardware pointer position reporting
(DSP_CAP_REALTIME, SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctls)
Support for capture/playback triggering
(DSP_CAP_TRIGGER, SNDCTL_DSP_SETTRIGGER ioctls)
SNDCTL_DSP_SETDUPLEX and SNDCTL_DSP_POST ioctls now handled.
Rewrite open(2) and close(2) logic to allow only one user at
a time. All other open(2) attempts will sleep until they succeed.
FIXME: open(O_RDONLY) and open(O_WRONLY) should be allowed to succeed.
Reviewed code to ensure that SMP and multiple audio devices
are fully supported.
Version 1.1.8
Clean up interrupt handler output. Fixes the following kernel error message:
unhandled interrupt ...
Convert documentation to DocBook, so that PDF, HTML and PostScript (.ps) output is readily
available.
Version 1.1.7
Fix module unload bug where mixer device left registered
after driver exit
Version 1.1.6
Rewrite via_set_rate to mimic ALSA basic AC97 rate setting
Remove much dead code
Complete spin_lock_irqsave -> spin_lock_irq conversion in via_dsp_ioctl
Fix build problem in via_dsp_ioctl
Optimize included headers to eliminate headers found in linux/sound
Version 1.1.5
Disable some overly-verbose debugging code
Remove unnecessary sound locks
Fix some ioctls for better time resolution
Begin spin_lock_irqsave -> spin_lock_irq conversion in via_dsp_ioctl
Version 1.1.4
Completed rewrite of driver. Eliminated SoundBlaster compatibility
completely, and now uses the much-faster scatter-gather DMA engine.
Internal Functions
!Isound/oss/via82cxxx_audio.c