Support for X-Fi external front panel - how hard would it be to add it?

[Veselin Georgiev <anrieff@gmail.com>]

Hi guys,

I have a Creative X-fi Fatal1ty edition card that goes along with an external 
front panel (I/O) module, mounted in the 5.25" bay.
So I see there is no support for the front panel in the ALSA X-fi driver, and 
I'm wondering how hard would it be to add it? Is it at all feasible?

I'm hazy on the following stuff:
- Does one need to reverse-engineer how the sound card communicates with the 
front panel, or there are datasheets about that available?
- Correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK, the emu10k1 driver works fine with SB 
Live! or Audigy-based front-panels, so why not borrow some code from there and 
hack it into the ctxfi?

I'm ready to try out some hacking with this and get my hands dirty with code 
if required.

On a related note, there should be some official statement in the wiki saying 
that the front panel is not supported, as I did a lot of googling, checking 
various ubuntu/fedora forum posts that hinted the lack of support, and I'm 
still puzzled... :s

Best Regards,
Veselin Georgiev