Subject: Re: Device driver compatibility question
To: None <trevin@xmission.com>
From: Charles M. Hannum <root@ihack.net>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 03/23/1999 07:54:39
[This is sort of a FAQ...]

The short answer is: no, there are no PCI sound cards that are
compatible with the `sb' driver.  There are some PCI sound cards that
we do have drivers for, however; these include the Turtle Beach
Daytona (which I just bought for $40 a few days ago; and anything else
with a SonicVibes chip on it) and the original Ensoniq AudioPCI (with
the ES1370 chip).  We will soon have a driver for the Creative-branded
AudioPCI as well.

The longer answer is:

It is physically impossible for a pure PCI card to actually be
hardware compatible with an ISA card that does DMA.  Some of the
signals required simply do not exist.  The way they achieve
compatibility is with a set of hacks -- in the core logic to forward
ISA DMA signals to the PCI card, and in the card to trap accesses to
the `compatible' I/O range and emulate them in software.  This
requires a TSR/driver which is only available under DOS or Windows.

To use these cards under other operating systems requires a
specialized driver for each particular chip.  It turns out that there
are only a few variants which are common, however -- the SonicVibes,
the AudioPCI, the Aureal chips, and the SB LIVE!  Unfortunately, there
is no readily available documentation on the latter two, which makes
it difficult to support them.