Status of VIA Envy24 audio controller

[Laurent Courty]

Le dimanche 16 juillet 2006 19:11, vous avez écrit :
> On 7/16/06, Laurent Courty <lrntct at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > It's great to see people working on envy24 support. Thanks a lot hackers
> > ! I'm thinking about buying an Onkyo SE-90PCI board.
> > Do you think if it's possible to make it work on FreeBSD ? It seem to use
> > the
> > VT1720T (Envy24MT). As I see on Nikolas' web site, no datasheet is
> > currently
> > available for this chip. How can I help ? Should I ask VIA for datasheet
> > ?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Laurent
> > _______________________________________________
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>
> nothing is impossible, but ...
> looks like it is time to discuss VIA reference design, because both
> Chaintech AV710 (there are many similar versions of that board from other
> manufacturer like OOAOO SQ710II) and Onkyo SE-90PCI seems to use reference
> design.
> according to that picture:
>
> http://xkodi.svobodno.com/xkodi/se90pci_3.jpg
>
> SE-90PCI uses VT1720T + WM8716 + 49.152 MHz crystal on VT1720T XIN2 pin.
> i made list of VIA reference design with their corresponding EEPROM
> content:
>
> http://xkodi.svobodno.com/envy24/envy24_ref_e2proms/envy24_ref_e2proms.html
>
> first revision of Chaintech AV710 uses Envy24PT (VT1720PT) and later
> revision uses Envy24HT-S (VT1721) and that is possible, because all
> Envy24GT/PT/MT/HT-S are subset of Envy24HT in term of features (and pins),
> so SE-90PCI is number 5 in the list, Chaintech AV710 is number 7.
>
> datasheet are available only for Envy24PT and Envy24HT (and Envy24 but it
> is very different chip) and comparing them it is possible to guess (but we
> can't be sure) for example how Envy24HT-S works, but Envy24MT has different
> package, so maybe very different pin assignment and it is very unlikely VIA
> to provide datasheets, because i have already asked them, when i buy my
> first Envy24-based card.
>
> two days ago accidentally i found Chaintech AV710 and bought it, because it
> is very cheap - 10 times cheaper than my Terratec DMX 6fire, as i said it
> is number 7 in the list of VIA reference design, so it uses VT1721 + VT1616
> + WM8728 + 24.576 MHz crystal on XIN2 pin.
> VT1616 is AC97 codec, but WM8728 is I2S codec very similar to WM8716 used
> in SE-90PCI.
>
> i'm trying to find out how the board works with WM8728, because WM8728 has
> 3 control modes:
> 1. hardware
> 2. software:
> 2.1. 3-wire SPI-compatible
> 2.2. 2-wire
>
> also i'm assuming that pin assignment of Envy24HT-S is same as Envy24PT
> (there is no datasheet available for Envy24HT-S) and i'm very puzzled,
> because till now i can't find the LATI2S pin of WM8728 to be wired to any
> of VT1721 GPIO pins, so it can't be in SPI mode and i'm starting to think
> it is in hardware or 2-wire mode, but i'm not sure. also i can't understand
> from WM8728 datasheet how 2-wire mode works. all other Envy24-based boards,
> that have support till now under FreeBSD use SPI mode.
>
> WM8716 has 2 control modes:
> 1. hardware
> 2. 3-wire SPI-compatible
>
> both cards uses same VIA (very buggy) driver under Windows, both codecs
> have hardware mode, so maybe it makes sense that hardware mode is used and
> that the codec is initialized in hardware, because then no specific driver
> code is required.
>
> on AV710 board DIN pin of WM8728 is wired to Envy24HT-S PSDOUT[1] pin, so
> according to Envy24PT datasheet, "biDirectional PCI Stereo Pairs DMA
> Playback" is used instead of "Multi-Channel Interleaved DMA Playback".
> currently we have code only for "Multi-Channel Interleaved DMA Playback"
> and at the moment i'm not sure how hard or how easy is "biDirectional PCI
> Stereo Pairs DMA Playback" support to be added.
>
> i'm expecting SE-90PCI to have same design - DIN pin of WM8716 to be wired
> to Envy24MT PSDOUT[1] pin.
>
> so for Chaintech AV710 and SE-90PCI a lot of new code is reqiured and also
> to find out how WM8728/WM8716 are controlled, not to mention Envy24MT pin
> assignment.
>
> i'm not aware of someone except me currently trying to do something about
> Envy24 support under FreeBSD and my main interest is to add support for my
> two Terratec cards - "DMX 6fire" and "Aureon Space". i have already add
> support for "DMX 6fire" and it is running using the patched version of
> Katsurajima Naoto's code for Envy24+AK452x.
>
> i also have added support for Envy24HT+WM8770:
>
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-multimedia/2006-June/004347.html
>
> so my "Aureon Space" is also running, but the code is very messy, so i need
> to refine it and also i'm planning to add support for Audiotrak Prodigy
> 7.1, because it is very similar to "Aureon Space".
>
> it would be great if someone want to help with something, because current
> code has some problems, there are very huge numbers of different
> Envy24-based boards and making full Envy24 support under FreeBSD is very
> huge task, so any help is appreciated.

Thanks for your answer. 
I was thinking VIA was more "FLOSS friendly". But if I understand well, 
developers are more importants than datasheet here. Unfortunately I haven't 
any programming skills. So I can help in a very limited manner. 

Laurent