Status of Echo/Event support

Status of Echo/Event support

[David Olofson]

Hi!

I still have that Echo/Event Layla audio interface lying around. I 
don't have any use for it whatsoever as it is now, since I don't use 
Windoze at all any more (except occasionally, for some minor projects 
at work) and I can't use Layla with Linux.

So, I have to make a decision: Either I look at Echo's C++ source and 
hack an ALSA driver - or I get rid of my Layla, and get a Delta 1010 
or something. I'll look at their code and see how I feel about it... 

As you might have guessed, there is *one* thing against:

	Why did it take so damn long to releas that code!?

The fact that I still have a Layla card now is part coincidence, part 
me being too lazy to get rid of it... Now, I'm basically wondering if 
anyone still wants to hear about Echo. I must admit that I still have 
hard feelings personally - but that might also have to do with the 
major hardware and driver issues I had before I got the thing to work 
under Windoze.


Anyway, what I'm wondering is basically two things:

	* Is anyone else already working on a driver already?

	* Does anyone care? That is, does anyone else around
	  here own - or have access to - one of these units?
	  (Maybe I should ask in a somewhat more public place?)

	* I have some 18 years of programming experience
	  (mostly to-the-metal stuff), some kernel hacking
	  experience, but no ALSA coding experience. Any
	  rough estimate how much time I'd need to add Echo
	  support to ALSA?


Thanks,

*off to read that source*


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

.- Coming soon from VaporWare Inc...------------------------.
| The Return of Audiality! Real, working software. Really!  |
| Real time and off-line synthesis, scripting, MIDI, LGPL...|
`-----------------------------------> (Public Release RSN) -'
.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
|    The Multimedia Application Integration Architecture    |
`----------------------------> http://www.linuxdj.com/maia -'
   --- http://olofson.net --- http://www.reologica.se ---


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Re: Status of Echo/Event support

[Takashi Iwai]

Hi David,

At Fri, 6 Dec 2002 03:15:32 +0100,
David Olofson wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I still have that Echo/Event Layla audio interface lying around. I 
> don't have any use for it whatsoever as it is now, since I don't use 
> Windoze at all any more (except occasionally, for some minor projects 
> at work) and I can't use Layla with Linux.
> 
> So, I have to make a decision: Either I look at Echo's C++ source and 
> hack an ALSA driver - or I get rid of my Layla, and get a Delta 1010 
> or something. I'll look at their code and see how I feel about it... 
> 
> As you might have guessed, there is *one* thing against:
> 
> 	Why did it take so damn long to releas that code!?

well, afaik, both Jaroslav and I haven't check this soundcard, because
we have no this hardware.
so, perhaps the answer is that no one is working on it yet.


> The fact that I still have a Layla card now is part coincidence, part 
> me being too lazy to get rid of it... Now, I'm basically wondering if 
> anyone still wants to hear about Echo. I must admit that I still have 
> hard feelings personally - but that might also have to do with the 
> major hardware and driver issues I had before I got the thing to work 
> under Windoze.
> 
> 
> Anyway, what I'm wondering is basically two things:
> 
> 	* Is anyone else already working on a driver already?
> 
> 	* Does anyone care? That is, does anyone else around
> 	  here own - or have access to - one of these units?
> 	  (Maybe I should ask in a somewhat more public place?)
> 
> 	* I have some 18 years of programming experience
> 	  (mostly to-the-metal stuff), some kernel hacking
> 	  experience, but no ALSA coding experience. Any
> 	  rough estimate how much time I'd need to add Echo
> 	  support to ALSA?

when i write a new driver, it would take

- ca. 1 week if there is an OSS driver,
- ca. 2 weeks if it's a normal PCI (or ISA) device and there is enough
 technical info, and
- more for exotic environment :)

until the first beta release.  a test version may be ealier, though.


recently i wrote a small howto for writing an alsa-driver.  please
check the archive of alsa-devel ml.


ciao,

Takashi


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Re: Status of Echo/Event support

[Takashi Iwai]

At Mon, 9 Dec 2002 15:20:21 +0100,
David Olofson wrote:
> 
> > when i write a new driver, it would take
> >
> > - ca. 1 week if there is an OSS driver,
> > - ca. 2 weeks if it's a normal PCI (or ISA) device and there is
> > enough technical info, and
> > - more for exotic environment :)
> >
> > until the first beta release.  a test version may be ealier,
> > though.
> 
> Well, I'll see if I can match those times... ;-)
> 
> BTW, we're talking about som 650 kB of C++ code. Any estimates on 
> what that actually means?

hmm, sorry, difficult to say only from the code size.
the difficulty lies on how exotic the hardware design is.
if there is a similar design, you can reuse the existing driver code,
and it will reduce really much time.

> Anyway, I'll get started as soon as I get an official statement on 
> this "sublicensing as pure GPL" issue. That is, whether I should make 
> this a real driver, or an unofficial "C++ in kernel" hack. I'm not 
> converting all that code if it's never going into ALSA or Linux 
> anyway. (*Maybe* I could use some C++ to C converter, but that's 
> probably even worse than starting with the C++! ;-)

c++ on kernel is yet taboo.
and as long as the driver is written in c, it would be much better to
rewrite it by yourself rather than using some conversion tools.
otherwise you'll get lost what the code does.

although it depends on the architecture, usually the difficult
parts of most of pci sound drivers are

- initialization, especially if a micro-code is required,
- interrupt handling,
- conversion of units (bytes, frames, samples!)


the mixer stuff is usually easy to implement.


Takashi


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