NetBSD/share/man/man4/sb.4

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.Dd June 22, 2005
.Dt SB 4
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm sb
.Nd SoundBlaster family (and compatible) audio device driver
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Cd "sb0    at isa? port 0x220 irq 5 drq 1 drq2 5"
.Cd "sb1    at isa? port 0x240 irq 7 drq 1 flags 1"
.Cd "sb*    at isapnp?"
.Cd "sb*    at pnpbios? index ?"
.Cd "audio* at audiobus?"
.Cd "midi*  at sb?"
.Cd "mpu*   at sb?"
.Cd "opl*   at sb?"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
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.
.Pp
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).
.Pp
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}.
.Pp
The configuration file must use 1
.Cm 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.
.Pp
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 output 8 bit samples to 16 bits and using the 8 bit DMA channel
for input and the 16 bit channel for output.
.Pp
The joystick interface (if enabled by a jumper) is handled by the
.Xr joy 4
driver, and the optional SCSI CD-ROM interface is handled by the
.Xr aic 4
driver.
.Pp
SoundBlaster 16 cards have MPU401 emulation and can use the mpu
attachment, older cards have a different way to generate MIDI and
has a midi device attached directly to the
.Nm .
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr aic 4 ,
.Xr audio 4 ,
.Xr isa 4 ,
.Xr isapnp 4 ,
.Xr joy 4 ,
.Xr midi 4 ,
.Xr mpu 4 ,
.Xr opl 4 ,
.Xr pnpbios 4
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
device driver appeared in
.Nx 1.0 .
.Sh BUGS
Non-SCSI CD-ROM interfaces are not supported.
.Pp
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.