| An OSS/Lite Driver for the ESS Maestro3 family of sound chips | |
| Zach Brown, January 2001 | |
| Driver Status and Availability | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| The most recent version of this driver will hopefully always be available at | |
| http://www.zabbo.net/maestro3/ | |
| I will try and maintain the most recent stable version of the driver | |
| in both the stable and development kernel lines. | |
| Historically I've sucked pretty hard at actually doing that, however. | |
| ESS Maestro3 Chip Family | |
| ----------------------- | |
| The 'Maestro3' is much like the Maestro2 chip. The noted improvement | |
| is the removal of the silicon in the '2' that did PCM mixing. All that | |
| work is now done through a custom DSP called the ASSP, the Asynchronus | |
| Specific Signal Processor. | |
| The 'Allegro' is a baby version of the Maestro3. I'm not entirely clear | |
| on the extent of the differences, but the driver supports them both :) | |
| The 'Allegro' shows up as PCI ID 0x1988 and the Maestro3 as 0x1998, | |
| both under ESS's vendor ID of 0x125D. The Maestro3 can also show up as | |
| 0x199a when hardware strapping is used. | |
| The chip can also act as a multi function device. The modem IDs follow | |
| the audio multimedia device IDs. (so the modem part of an Allegro shows | |
| up as 0x1989) | |
| Driver OSS Behavior | |
| -------------------- | |
| This OSS driver exports /dev/mixer and /dev/dsp to applications, which | |
| mostly adhere to the OSS spec. This driver doesn't register itself | |
| with /dev/sndstat, so don't expect information to appear there. | |
| The /dev/dsp device exported behaves as expected. Playback is | |
| supported in all the various lovely formats. 8/16bit stereo/mono from | |
| 8khz to 48khz, with both read()/write(), and mmap(). | |
| /dev/mixer is an interface to the AC'97 codec on the Maestro3. It is | |
| worth noting that there are a variety of AC'97s that can be wired to | |
| the Maestro3. Which is used is entirely up to the hardware implementor. | |
| This should only be visible to the user by the presence, or lack, of | |
| 'Bass' and 'Treble' sliders in the mixer. Not all AC'97s have them. | |
| The Allegro has an onchip AC'97. | |
| The driver doesn't support MIDI or FM playback at the moment. | |
| Compiling and Installing | |
| ------------------------ | |
| With the drivers inclusion into the kernel, compiling and installing | |
| is the same as most OSS/Lite modular sound drivers. Compilation | |
| of the driver is enabled through the CONFIG_SOUND_MAESTRO3 variable | |
| in the config system. | |
| It may be modular or statically linked. If it is modular it should be | |
| installed with the rest of the modules for the kernel on the system. | |
| Typically this will be in /lib/modules/ somewhere. 'alias sound-slot-0 | |
| maestro3' should also be added to your module configs (typically | |
| /etc/modprobe.conf) if you're using modular OSS/Lite sound and want to | |
| default to using a maestro3 chip. | |
| There are very few options to the driver. One is 'debug' which will | |
| tell the driver to print minimal debugging information as it runs. This | |
| can be collected with 'dmesg' or through the klogd daemon. | |
| One is 'external_amp', which tells the driver to attempt to enable | |
| an external amplifier. This defaults to '1', you can tell the driver | |
| not to bother enabling such an amplifier by setting it to '0'. | |
| And the last is 'gpio_pin', which tells the driver which GPIO pin number | |
| the external amp uses (0-15), The Allegro uses 8 by default, all others 1. | |
| If everything loads correctly and seems to be working but you get no sound, | |
| try tweaking this value. | |
| Systems known to need a different value | |
| Panasonic ToughBook CF-72: gpio_pin=13 | |
| Power Management | |
| ---------------- | |
| This driver has a minimal understanding of PCI Power Management. It will | |
| try and power down the chip when the system is suspended, and power | |
| it up with it is resumed. It will also try and power down the chip | |
| when the machine is shut down. |