sb(4) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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SB(4)                   NetBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual                  SB(4)


NAME

     sb -- SoundBlaster family (and compatible) audio device driver


SYNOPSIS

     sb0    at isa? port 0x220 irq 5 drq 1 drq2 5
     sb1    at isa? port 0x240 irq 7 drq 1 flags 1
     sb*    at isapnp?
     sb*    at pnpbios? index ?
     audio* at audiobus?
     midi*  at sb?
     mpu*   at sb?
     opl*   at sb?


DESCRIPTION

     The sb driver provides support for the SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro,
     SoundBlaster 16, Jazz 16, SoundBlaster AWE 32, SoundBlaster AWE 64, and
     hardware register-level compatible audio cards.

     The SoundBlaster series are half-duplex cards, capable of 8- and 16-bit
     audio sample recording and playback at rates up to 44.1kHz (depending on
     the particular model).

     The base I/O port address is usually jumper-selected to either 0x220 or
     0x240 (newer cards may provide software configuration, but this driver
     does not directly support them--you must configure the card for its I/O
     addresses with other software).  The SoundBlaster takes 16 I/O ports.
     For the SoundBlaster and SoundBlaster Pro, the IRQ and DRQ channels are
     jumper-selected.  For the SoundBlaster 16, the IRQ and DRQ channels are
     set by this driver to the values specified in the config file.  The IRQ
     must be selected from the set {5,7,9,10}.

     The configuration file must use 1 flags specification to enable the
     Jazz16 support.  This is to avoid potential conflicts with other devices
     when probing the Jazz 16 because it requires use of extra I/O ports not
     in the base port range.

     With a SoundBlaster 16 card the device is full duplex, but it can only
     sensibly handle a precision of 8 bits.  It does so by extending the out-
     put 8 bit samples to 16 bits and using the 8 bit DMA channel for input
     and the 16 bit channel for output.

     The joystick interface (if enabled by a jumper) is handled by the joy(4)
     driver, and the optional SCSI CD-ROM interface is handled by the aic(4)
     driver.

     SoundBlaster 16 cards have MPU401 emulation and can use the mpu attach-
     ment, older cards have a different way to generate MIDI and has a midi
     device attached directly to the sb.


SEE ALSO

     aic(4), audio(4), isa(4), isapnp(4), joy(4), midi(4), mpu(4), opl(4),
     pnpbios(4)


HISTORY

     The sb device driver appeared in NetBSD 1.0.


BUGS

     Non-SCSI CD-ROM interfaces are not supported.

     The MIDI interface on the SB hardware is braindead, and the driver needs
     to busy wait while writing MIDI data.  This will consume a lot of system
     time.

NetBSD 4.0                       June 22, 2005                      NetBSD 4.0