sb(4)
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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), i386/pnpbios(4), isa(4), isapnp(4), joy(4), midi(4),
mpu(4), opl(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 10.99 June 22, 2005 NetBSD 10.99
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