> When I 'cat file.au > /dev/audio' it will work for a short while (a
> file or two)  and then suddenly, on the beginning of a new file, it'll
> enable the speaker (as evidenced by a 'click') and then promptly 
> block.  The only recourse then is to reboot.
> 
> I can't decide if it's this stupid card or if something has gone awry
> in the driver.
> 
> Is anyone having better luck with their cards?

I have been having the same problem as well.  I'll cat a file to 
/dev/audio, I can hear the click of the speaker, but then nothing comes 
out, and that process becomes hung, and impossible to kill.  The speaker 
then cannot work, and I have to reboot.

Are you using a Soundblaster 16?  That's what I have.  Unfortunately, I 
believe these cards are buggy (which sucks, since I paid about $219 when 
they newly came out), and have had similar behavior when playing audio 
files under Dos/Windows and such.  The problem becomes increasingly 
apparent when playing long digitized speech or other digitized sounds.  
This is why it doesn't act up when playing games and such, since sound 
effects last for short periods of time.  I've had this problem ever since 
I got the card, and don't know how to fix it.

Is the NetBSD sb driver the same as FreeBSD's?  I haven't had a problem 
at all when I ran FreeBSD-1.0.2 to -1.1.5.1 with the sound.  Of course it 
still does the stupid "hang" trick when I play long digitized files of 
speech and stuff, but it never hung when I played short files.  NetBSD's 
driver hangs my computer consistently, no matter what I throw at it.

Will the sound drivers in NetBSD ever be updated?

--Mark Steven de Sagun Tamola
--buckwild@u.washington.edu