Status of VIA Envy24 audio controller

[Konstantin Dimitrov]

On 7/18/06, Laurent Courty <lrntct at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Great news :)
> If I understand well (my English knowledge is not so good, and my
> electronic
> one is even worse) , you are thinking that Envy24HT-S is similar by design
> with the Envy24MT ? The only thing to do is to find the wiring between the
>
> envy chip and the codec chip ? This can be done with a ohmmeter.


i use Envy24PT (VT1720) datasheet to add Envy24HT-S (VT1721) support, so i'm
expecting Envy24MT(VT1720T) also to be very similar (in term of registers)
to Envy24PT (VT1720), my only concern is that VT1720T has different chip
package than VT1720, so maybe different pin assignment, maybe the pins are
also identical, but without datasheet, nothing can be 100% sure, so i can be
almost sure that VT1720T is almost identical to VT1720.

if VT1720T and VT1720 have identical pin assignment the only thing you need
to do is to find the wiring between the VT1720T and WM8716 chip using
ohmmeter (to be more specific the wiring between 3 control pins of WM8716
and some of the 16 GPIO pins of Envy24 chip, so no more than 3*16=48 checks
are required).

I don't understand exactly what do you call "reference design", but the
> Chaintech and Onkyo board doesn't look very similar to me.


i'm using "reference design" for all cards that use one of the designs
listed here:

http://xkodi.svobodno.com/envy24/envy24_ref_e2proms/envy24_ref_e2proms.html

all boards with reference design use the same VIA reference driver under
Windows. the driver "speaks" only with Envy24 chip and with audio codec chip
( via Envy24 chip ) and doesn't care about other components on the board
like resistors, capacitators, etc. so they may look very different, but all
boards, for example, like Chaintech AV710 (number 7 in the list), that use
Envy24 + WM8728, have the same wiring between Envy24 and WM8728, because VIA
reference driver needs to know that wiring to be able to work with them.
Same apply for FreeBSD driver, so when we know wiring for reference design
number 7 (AV710) all cards that use that design, for example, like OOAOO
SQ710II will run with the same driver code.

Chaintech and Onkyo board are with different reference design - Chaintech
board is number 7 in the list and Onkyo board is number 5 and that is why
the wiring of SE-90 is unknown, i know only wiring for reference design
number 7 (AV710) and for some non-reference boards like Terratec Aureon
Space, but Chaintech and Onkyo board use almost identical Envy24 chips, so
almost no additional Envy24 related code will be required, only code for the
new audio codec (WM8716) and the new wiring (between the Envy24 chip and
WM8716), which should be easy.

For now, I do not have a SE-90. I will not spend 110€ in an audio card if
> there aren't good chance for it to be supported by my OS of choice.
> On the other hand, if you tell me that this card could to be supported
> "for
> almost sure", I could buy it.
>

to summarize:
it is almost sure that VT1720T is almost identical to VT1720 and if so, the
only needed thing is the wiring between VT1720T and WM8716 used on SE-90
board, but i say "almost", so there is always chance that VT1720T has
different pin assignment ...

SE-90 is very expensive, it is your decision ...