Some questions about hardware and software

[Roland Smith]

On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 09:24:42AM +0200, Michele wrote:
>  Hi, I'm thinking to change my OS from windows to freeBSD and I would some
>  information about:

If you download the FreeSBIE live-CD from http://www.freesbie.org/, burn
it and boot from it you can check if all your hardware works.
 
>    - There is an ATI graphics driver with 3D acceleration for freeBSD
>    that works fine?

The radeon driver that comes with Xorg supports accellerated 3D upto and
including the 9250 chip (aka RV 280). The RV300 is supported by a
different driver. Newer chips aren't supported due to lack of documentation.

>    - I have the AC'97 realtek controller audio, there is a driver for it?

I've got an AC97 compatible chip embedded in the VIA VT8237. That works:
pcm0: <VIA VT8237> port 0xd800-0xd8ff irq 22 at device 17.5 on pci0
pcm0: <Avance Logic ALC850 AC97 Codec>

It says Avance Logic, but you can find the same chip (ALC850) branded as
a Realtek. So at least some Realtek AC97 chips are supported.

Try loading the generic snd_driver module (kldload snd_driver.ko), and
see if it works. If it does, use kldstat to see which snd_* driver it loaded. 

>    - Is there a porting about fmod sound library? (see
>    http://www.fmod.org/)

Currently fmod cannot be ported since they do not distribute source
code. You'll have to ask them if they are willing to make binaries for
FreeBSD available, or if they're willing to release the source code.

Note that there are different sound libraries freely available from the
FreeBSD ports system. Look in /usr/ports/audio or /usr/ports/multimedia.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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