Sound Driver for 82801FB

[Stephane E. Potvin]

Thomas Hurst wrote:
> * Martin Wilke (unixfreunde at gmail.com) wrote:
> 
>> I've bought myself an Intel Pentium M pc, which has the Soundchip
>> intel 82801FB/FR/FW/FRW in it.  Is it possible to build a Driver for
>> it?
> 
> This is one of Intel's new HDA (High Defenition Audio) chips, which is
> not yet supported:
> 
>   http://www.freebsd.org/projects/ideas/#p-hda
> 
> Looks like there's a NetBSD driver to port now.
> 

I'm currently working on this as I have recently updated my laptop and
I'm now without sound too. I first looked in porting the NetBSD driver
but very soon decided not to do it this way.

They have implemented a monolithic driver that controls both the hda
controller and the audio codec. As one controller can control multiple
codecs that can have various types: audio, modem, etc. I chose to implement
a hda controller (hdac) which will attach to the controller and will
then probe for the various codecs attached to it via the HDA Link and
attach other drivers to control these. This way, it will be possible to
have more than one audio codec controlled at the same time (one in the
laptop and one in the docking station for example), and maybe in time a
modem codec (though I don't think I'll do that myself).

But, and this is a big but, don't hold you breath. I'm not going very fast
as I don't have that much time to invest into that after job and real life.
Currently, I have the basic architecture in place on paper and the driver is
just ready to start sending and receiving commands (verbs) to the codecs.

Regards,

Steph