Belated Feedback: HAL2

Belated Feedback: HAL2

[Mike Hill]

Hi Ulf,

This is only a month late, but the sound driver installation went without a
hitch, precisely according to your instructions.  I fired up the Indy last
night using the latest sound kernel and played an .mp3 file using mpg123.

One thing I noticed was the absence of the occasional skips I've experienced
in recent years playing CDs under IRIX 6.2.  I don't know if this can be
attributed to a larger OS or my '94-vintage single-speed SGI-enabled CD
drive, but it's not something I recall happening under IRIX 5.2.  (I guess
5.2 was less taxing on 32 M RAM.)

In an aside, Tux displays brilliantly at bootup on my 8-bit Newport.

Regards,

Mike

Re: Belated Feedback: HAL2

[Ulf Carlsson]

Mike,

> This is only a month late, but the sound driver installation went without a
> hitch, precisely according to your instructions. I fired up the Indy last
> night using the latest sound kernel and played an .mp3 file using mpg123.

Better late than never. Great news!

> One thing I noticed was the absence of the occasional skips I've experienced
> in recent years playing CDs under IRIX 6.2.  I don't know if this can be
> attributed to a larger OS or my '94-vintage single-speed SGI-enabled CD
> drive, but it's not something I recall happening under IRIX 5.2.  (I guess
> 5.2 was less taxing on 32 M RAM.)

We beat IRIX, that sound great to me ;-)

I'm interested in how this CD playback works. Does it read raw data from the CD
drive and just play it on the HAL2 or are there some other and smarter ways of
doing it? I have a half-broken SCSI CD player here (which I'm currently only
using to raise my monitor some inches from the desk). Is it possible to read raw
data from an audio CD?

- Ulf

Re: Belated Feedback: HAL2

[Dave Olson]

Ulf Carlsson wrote: 
|  We beat IRIX, that sound great to me ;-)

The singlespeed cdrom drive was very touchy; it was the first generation
drive to support audio data over scsi.  It's unlikely to be a RAM limitation,
but who knows, at this point...

|  I'm interested in how this CD playback works. Does it read raw data from the CD
|  drive and just play it on the HAL2 or are there some other and smarter ways of

It reads the audio data over scsi, converts it if needed, and sends it
through the audio system.


Dave Olson, Silicon Graphics
http://reality.sgi.com/olson   olson@sgi.com

Re: Belated Feedback: HAL2

[Dave Olson]

Ulf Carlsson wrote: 
|  We beat IRIX, that sound great to me ;-)

The singlespeed cdrom drive was very touchy; it was the first generation
drive to support audio data over scsi.  It's unlikely to be a RAM limitation,
but who knows, at this point...

|  I'm interested in how this CD playback works. Does it read raw data from the CD
|  drive and just play it on the HAL2 or are there some other and smarter ways of

It reads the audio data over scsi, converts it if needed, and sends it
through the audio system.


Dave Olson, Silicon Graphics
http://reality.sgi.com/olson   olson@sgi.com