Create Extigy

[Chris Dillon]

On Sat, 19 Apr 2003, Derek Young wrote:

> >Do you already know
> >about 'http://www.cs.umass.edu/~cochran/'?
> >(link from 'http://opensource.creative.com/')
> >
> >18.04.2003; 23:41:12
> >[SorAlx]  http://cydem.org.ua/
>
> Couple issues.. one the guy created a /dev/ir device... which isn't
> accurate because the extigy has a knob on the front which you turn
> that adjusts the volume in the software of your computer. That isn't
> IR :-P not to mention various other multimedia control type devices
> might show up in the next few years.

>From what I've read about this thing, the volume knob on the Extigy
generates an IR event via their on-board IR controller, so that isn't
too inaccurate.

> No dolby surround sound.

That is a legal issue you might run into.  If you do Dolby Anything in
software you will likely need permission from Dolby Labs.  If it only
involves flipping a bit to turn something on in the Extigy, that would
probably be fine, but IANAL.

> He doesn't know how to update the firmware.... I do. I might figure
> out something where the person downloads the latest firmware and put
> it in the /ports/distfiles (a la, java).

Are you sure the firmware gets downloaded every time?  On the Extigy
which I recently purchased, one of the first things I did was download
the latest firmware and drivers for XP.  It appeared to have actually
flashed new firmware into the Extigy, since before the firmware
upgrade the Extigy didn't want to turn on CMSS until the Windows
drivers had initialized it.  Now, I can turn it on at any time, even
when it is not hooked up to a USB port on the computer.  However, I
have yet to actually see if it has any effect when the Extigy is
working in stand-alone mode.  The fact that the behavior changed
indicates something had to have been changed internally in the Extigy.
Maybe it is two-part, some new firmware flashed into in the Extigy,
and more gets downloaded on initialization?

> The linux usb and sound support is not exactly like ours.

> It can only play at 48KHz..

Isn't this is a limitation of the Extigy itself?

> However, there is a ton of things supported by the Extigy that I
> think might just be software. With CMMS on playing a mp3 takes
> around 10% of my CPU. Heh.

Yes, quite a bit of the extra candy features are handled in software.
I think all the Extigy actually does is 48KHz D/A and A/D conversion,
and Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding (via an internal Zoran decoder).

-- 
 Chris Dillon - cdillon(at)wolves.k12.mo.us
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