Audio Driver Poll

I'm interested in collecting data about audio devices that folks are using. So, I've a few questions, which maybe folks could send answers to me. Here are the questions:

1. Is there already support in Solaris for your audio devices/needs? (If yes, stop here, and no need to send me any information -- you're already covered as a "mainstream" user.)
2. If you're using 4Front's OSS, and you're using a hardware driver other than apci97, hdaudio, ich, via8233, atiaudio, then please let me know what driver you are using, and what the actual audio hardware is (cat /dev/sndstat might be useful here.) (If the audio is built into a motherboard, I'd like to know the make/model of computer, and the rough date -- year -- that you purchased it.)
3. Do you use/would you use hardware MIDI support?
4. Are you using digital audio (Dolby Digital/AC3, and/or SPDIF) on your Solaris system? If so, please provide detail.
5. Do you have any use for more than a single active input source? (I.e. do you need more than a microphone, or line input, to be supported simultaneously for recording?) If so, please provide detail.
6. Do you have any other audio needs for Solaris beyond normal business/consumer audio? (I.e. I assume that most folks want audio good enough for DVD playback, gaming, and video conferencing.) Particularly, if you want to use Solaris audio to do production work, internet radio broadcasting, etc. then I'd like to know about that.
7. If the answer to #1 is "no", then if you're willing, I'd like to have your e-mail address so that I might contact you to discuss your particular needs/application further.

Thanks. My hope is to better understand the community needs so we can focus on the things that people need most.

Boycott Laptops with Broadcom WiFi

It seems to be a recurring theme, but we keep hearing about different WLAN parts that don't work with NDIS wrapper, or other problems building the NDIS wrapper etc.

I've never used the NDIS wrapper, and I refuse to do so. I also refuse to purchase or recommend any laptop with a Broadcom WLAN part on it, at least until Broadcom changes their position and makes it possible for 3rd parties (even under NDA) to develop device drivers for their WLAN products.

The reason is simple: until laptop manufacturers start losing sales due to people who take the same position, they won't stop including Broadcom WLAN on their products. The loss of a few individual WLAN cards won't impact Broadcom at all, but if Gateway or Dell stops purchasing WLAN parts, then its a whole new ballgame. And the more laptop vendors that we can get to understand that use of Broadcom leads to lost sales, the more impact it will have.

Either Broadcom will take notice, and correct their behavior (e.g. by offering 3rd parties access to device driver info under NDA, writing drivers themselves for platforms like OpenSolaris, or even better, offering up open technical specs), or their WLAN products will gradually fade from popularity so that they are no longer relevant.

To be honest, I don't care which result comes about. But please, don't use or purchase Broadcom WLAN. And to those of you writing neat things like NDIS wrapper and reverse engineering efforts like the bwi driver in *BSD, I'd recommend you rethink whether enabling further sales of laptops bundled with Broadcom WLAN is really something you want to encourage.

(For specific alternatives to Broadcom WLAN, look for either Intel or Atheros WIFI.)

Suspend/Resume Goodness!

Its been a busy week.

In the past week, there have been three separate putbacks:

1) Kerry Shut putback a fix for audiohd to suspend/resume
2) Brian Xu putback a fix for iwk to suspend/resume
3) Judy Chen putback a fix for ath to suspend/resume

The upshot of this is, if you have a laptop with an Nvidia graphics card, its a fair chance that your laptop will support suspend (and resume!)

A big thanks to everyone who's been working on this.

Brussels NDD compatibility code cleanup

I've just putback the changes to afe and mxfe to rip out the driver-private ndd support code and replace it with much cleaner and simpler mc_setprop(), mc_getprop() property access functions supplied by Brussels. For common link parameters Brussels does the NDD compatibility support for us. Yay! Drivers can be smaller.

There's a couple of opportunities here for folks to contribute driver improvements:

1) convert existing NIC drivers to the newer framework. E.g. rge, dmfe, maybe others.... (hme and eri for sure, but they may be hard due to the plethora of driver private properties they support via ndd).

2) try hard to remove private driver ioctl() support in favor of Brussels property functions

3) ADMtek centaur parts can support flow control, on certain hardware (pretty much anything shipped in the past 5-7 years.) Adding support for this in afe might be a relatively simple project, especially for someone familiar with ethernet flow control.

Contact me if you want to work on any of the above.

-- Garrett

New Project Direction -- Audio

So, since some folks may be wondering what I'm up to, I thought I'd briefly mention it here.

I've been asked to serve as tech. lead on the project integrate the software from 4Front's Open Sound System into OpenSolaris.

Surprisingly, this task isn't quite as straight-forward as it might seem. There are a number of outstanding issues that have to be resolved before the project can integrate, and we're working frantically to get them all resolved. We've also staffed up the project enough to increase the man power significantly beyond what was associated with in the past. So we are looking to drive this project to successful conclusion soon.

I'll have news about this in the future -- watch this space. But I will say this much -- it looks like in the not-distant-future there will be the ability to use OSS APIs from userland applications on *all* Solaris systems. This includes systems with older chips not supported by 4Front today, and Sun Ray thin client systems. Stay tuned.

(The other upshot with this project is that it is taking a great deal of my time, so my participation in other forums may appear to have dropped off -- but that is only so that I can devote as much of my time to making the OSS project a success. This is the same reason that I will not be attending the OpenSolaris Developer Summit this go around.... anything that detracts from getting work done is being set aside for now.)