OSS Lite version 3.8-beta release notes
---------------------------------------

Most up to date information about this driver is available from 
http://www.4front-tech.com/ossfree or http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/voxware
(European mirror).



Please read the SOUND-HOWTO (available from sunsite.unc.edu and other Linux FTP 
sites). It gives instructions about using sound with Linux. It's bit out of
date but still very useful. Information about bug fixes and such things
is available from the web page (see below).

Please check http://www.4front-tech.com/pguide for more info about programming
with OSS.

   ====================================================
-  THIS VERSION ____REQUIRES____ Linux 2.1.26 OR LATER.
   ====================================================

Packages "snd-util-3.7.tar.gz" and "snd-data-0.1.tar.Z"
contain useful utilities to be used with this driver.
See http://www.4front-tech.com/ossfree/getting.html for
download instructions.

If you are looking for the installation instructions, please
look at Readme.linux.

Supported soundcards
--------------------

See Readme.cards.

Please check http://www.4front-tech.com/ossfree if you don't find
your soundcard there.

Contributors
------------

This driver contains code by several contributors. In addition several other
persons have given useful suggestions. The following is a list of major
contributors. (I could have forgotten some names.)

	Craig Metz	1/2 of the PAS16 Mixer and PCM support
	Rob Hooft	Volume computation algorithm for the FM synth.
	Mika Liljeberg	uLaw encoding and decoding routines
	Jeff Tranter	Linux SOUND HOWTO document
	Greg Lee	Volume computation algorithm for the GUS and
			lot's of valuable suggestions.
	Andy Warner	ISC port
	Jim Lowe,
	Amancio Hasty Jr	FreeBSD/NetBSD port
	Anders Baekgaard 	Bug hunting and valuable suggestions.
	Joerg Schubert	SB16 DSP support (initial version).
	Andrew Robinson Improvements to the GUS driver
	Megens SA	MIDI recording for SB and SB Pro (initial version).
	Mikael Nordqvist  Linear volume support for GUS and
			  nonblocking /dev/sequencer.
	Ian Hartas		SVR4.2 port
	Markus Aroharju	and
	Risto Kankkunen		Major contributions to the mixer support
				of GUS v3.7.
	Hunyue Yau	Mixer support for SG NX Pro.
	Marc Hoffman	PSS support (initial version).
	Rainer Vranken	Initialization for Jazz16 (initial version).
	Peter Trattler	Initial version of loadable module support for Linux.
	JRA Gibson	16 bit mode for Jazz16 (initial version)
	Davor Jadrijevic MAD16 support (initial version)
	Gregor Hoffleit	Mozart support (initial version)
	Riccardo Facchetti Audio Excel DSP 16 (aedsp16) support
	James Hightower Spotting a tiny but important bug in CS423x support.
	Denis Sablic	OPTi 82C924 spesific enhancements (non PnP mode)
	Tim MacKenzie	Full duplex support for OPTi 82C930.
	
	Please look at lowlevel/README for more contributors.

There are probably many other names missing. If you have sent me some
patches and your name is not in the above list, please inform me.

Sponsors etc.
-------------

The following companies have greatly helped development of this driver 
in form of a free copy of their product:

Novell, Inc.		UnixWare personal edition + SDK
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. 	A SCO OpenServer + SDK
Ensoniq Corp,		a SoundScape card and extensive amount of assistance
MediaTrix Peripherals Inc, a AudioTrix Pro card + SDK
Acer, Inc.		a pair of AcerMagic S23 cards.

In addition the following companies have provided me sufficient amount
of technical information at least some of their products (free or $$$):

Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd.
Media Vision Inc.
Analog Devices Inc.
Logitech Inc.
Aztech Labs Inc.
Crystal Semiconductor Corporation,
Integrated Circuit Systems Inc.
OAK Technology
OPTi
Turtle Beach
miro
Ad Lib Inc. ($$)
Music Quest Inc. ($$)
Creative Labs ($$$)

If you have some problems
=========================

Read the sound HOWTO (sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/...?).
Also look at the home page (http://www.4front-tech.com/ossfree). It may
contain info about some recent bug fixes.

It's likely that you have some problems when trying to use the sound driver
first time. Soundcards don't have standard configuration so there are no
good default configuration to use. Please try to use same I/O, DMA and IRQ
values for the soundcard than with DOS.

If you get an error message when trying to use the driver, please look
at /var/adm/messages for more verbose error message.


In general the easiest way to diagnose problems is to do "cat /dev/sndstat".

If you get an error message, there are some problems with the driver setup:

	- "No such file or directory" tells that the device files for
	the sound driver are missing. Use the script at the end of
	linux/drivers/sound/Readme.linux to create them.

	- "No such device" tells that the sound driver is not in the kernel.
	You have to reconfigure and recompile the kernel to have the sound
	driver. Compiling the driver doesn't help alone. You have to boot
	with the newly compiled one before the driver becomes active.
	The Linux-HOWTO should help in this step.

The following errors are likely with /dev/dsp and /dev/audio.

	- "No such device or address". This error message should not happen
	with /dev/sndstat but it's possible with the other sound devices.
	This error indicates that there are no suitable hardware for the
	device file or the sound driver has been compiled without support for
	this particular device. For example /dev/audio and /dev/dsp will not
	work if "digitized voice support" was not enabled during "make config".
	
	- "Device or resource busy". Probably the IRQ (or DMA) channel 
	required by the soundcard is in use by some other device/driver.

	- "I/O error". Almost certainly (99%) it's an IRQ or DMA conflict.
	Look at the kernel messages in /var/adm/notice for more info.

	- "Invalid argument". The application is calling ioctl()
	with impossible parameters. Check that the application is
	for sound driver version 2.X or later.

In general the printout of of /dev/sndstat should tell what is the problem.
It's possible that there are bugs in the sound driver but 99% of the problems
reported to me are caused by somehow incorrect setup during "make config".

Best regards,

Hannu

Hannu Savolainen
hannu@voxware.pp.fi, hannu@4front-tech.com	
(Please check http://www.4front-tech.com/ossfree before mailing me).

Snail mail:	Hannu Savolainen
		Hiekkalaiturintie 3 A 8
		00980 Helsinki
		Finland
