README SoundBlaster 16 Driver for BeOS Intel R3.x

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Welcome! This is a SoundBlaster 16 driver for BeOS Intel R3.x.

It may be used by all owners of SB16 or compatible cards. This driver is

considered an experimental driver. Use it at your own risk. Anyway no severe

bugs are known and the driver runs fairly stable and shouldn't do any harm

to your system.



Currently the driver just supports playback and mixer use, but no capturing.

There are some minor problems left. See also the "Known Bugs" section for

further information.



This driver is freeware. Feel free to give it to anyone who might use it,

but be sure to tell all windows users to upgrade to BeOS before they try to

install this driver ;-)

All updates and the original archive can be found on:

http://www.be.com/beware/Drivers.html



In case you want to applaude for this incredible ;-) driver or just want to

flame me for a bug feel free to email me at th.schaaps@bigfoot.de.

Please use [SB16-Bug] as message subject.



USE THIS DRIVER AT YOUR OWN RISK! NO WARRANTIES FOR NOTHING!

NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY LOSSES WHICH MIGHT OCCUR BY USING THIS DRIVER:

NO MONEY BACK IF YOUR CAT DOESN'T LIKE THE SOUNDS YOU PLAY.



Installation

As all BeOS software this driver is really easy to install. Since you are

reading this README you already figured how to unzip the archive. Now you

only need to copy the SB16 file to /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/drivers

directory and you are done. If you use an older non-pnp revision of the SB16

you might also want to edit and copy the SB16_settings file to

/boot/home/config/settings. A more detailed explonation of the SB16_settings

file can be found in the file itself. You might also use the included utility

showisapnp which dumps some information on the currently installed PnP devices.

Be sure to run showisapnp from a terninal window.

HINT: If anything goes wrong with the driver, boot with your original BeOS

installation CD and press ALT-SHIFT-CONTROL-T to open a terminal window mount

your /boot filesystem and remove the driver.



Know Bugs:

As far as I know there are no severe bugs left in the current release of this

driver. But there is a known problem with Becasso. Currently it seems to be that

Becasso interferes with the Media Kit - even though I have no idea why - which

produces weird results on the DAC stream (shutting it down and other nasty effects).

This seems to be a Media Kit problem though, but it is evaluated and as soon as

there is a fix you will find a new driver on BeWare.



Another problem which might occur is strange behaviour of some legacy hardware

when you use the autoprobe facility of the driver. A primary candidate for this

are some older NE2000 compatible networks adapter cards as well as some ISA

based Adaptec SCSI controller cards (these aren't supported by BeOS anyway, so

you might get rid of this card :). If you run into trouble with autoprobing a

reboot should help (for the geeks who want to know everything: autoprobing can

put some cards in an unusable state).



Still missing:

Currently only digital audio playback is supported. No capturing, no MIDI. MIDI

won't be available before R4, but be sure to check on BeWare for an update which

supports capturing as well, which will be released as soon as it is done. But I

can't make any promises on that, since I'm doing this driver in my spare-time.



History:

1998-10-07 - V1.0  - Initial Release

1998-10-09 - V1.01 - some bugfixes, driver supports more mixersettings,

                     released as ZIP for BeWare



Thorsten Schaaps



Copyright (C) 1998 Thorsten Schaaps