I wonder if letting the physical size of the mixer register percolate
up into user space isn't a bug.  After all, BSD doesn't limit the size
of the lseek() argument to 24-bits when talking to a disk with only
2^24 bytes on it.

Why not have the user API use a full uint to describe the volume?
That way when hardware catches up and allows for more than 256 volume
levels things won't have to change again.  Why not have MAX_UINT be a
max volume level and 0 be the minimum volume level?  The sound driver
would then scale appropriately and stick the scaled number into the
mixer register.  For volume-level reads the driver should return the
full-precision uint number.

-wolfgang
-- 
       Wolfgang Rupprecht <wolfgang+gnus@dailyplanet.wsrcc.com>
		    http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/
Coming soon: GPS mapping tools for Open Systems. http://www.gnomad-mapping.com/