From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: James Courtier-Dutton Subject: Re: Testers wanted: New SB X-Fi driver Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:09:41 +0100 Message-ID: References: <4A5DB59B.2010407@freenet.de> <4A659DE2.40400@freenet.de> <4A65F200.8040200@freenet.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from fg-out-1718.google.com (fg-out-1718.google.com [72.14.220.159]) by alsa0.perex.cz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D54F10384C for ; Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:09:42 +0200 (CEST) Received: by fg-out-1718.google.com with SMTP id e21so876025fga.21 for ; Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:09:41 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <4A65F200.8040200@freenet.de> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: alsa-devel-bounces@alsa-project.org Errors-To: alsa-devel-bounces@alsa-project.org To: Frank Roth Cc: Takashi Iwai , alsa-devel@alsa-project.org List-Id: alsa-devel@alsa-project.org 2009/7/21 Frank Roth : > Ok thanks. > > So you still didn't have specifications from Creative? > Because I red some time ago, creative gave the specs to the opensource community? > How is it possible to write this drivers then? Only reengineering from their opensource drivers? > Impressive!! > > So I understand it right, everything is more or less software based right now? > We must change this ... (I would help you out, so far I can) > That is correct. I have the datasheets from Creative and they are not complete data sheets. They do not include the DSP workings of the card. They simply explain how to configure the card to bypass the DSP unit. The datasheet does contain some info regarding how one might use hardware mixing as this uses a separate "mixing unit" within the chip. I do not think that this "mixing unit" has been implemented in the open source driver. The DSP itself is very complex and as a result, reverse engineering it will be difficult. It would be possible if one had the time but I don't have the time. I consider it a similar task to if one was needing to reverse engineer the x86 chip without having any of the instruction set. Kind Regards James