/proc/sound, /dev/sndstat-------------------------/proc/sound and /dev/sndstat is not supported by thedriver. To find out whether the driver succeeded loading,check the kernel log (dmesg).ALaw/uLaw sample formats------------------------This driver does not support the ALaw/uLaw sample formats.ALaw is the default mode when opening a sound deviceusing OSS/Free. The reason for the lack of support isthat the hardware does not support these formats, and addingconversion routines to the kernel would lead to very uglycode in the presence of the mmap interface to the driver.And since xquake uses mmap, mmap is considered important :-)and no sane application uses ALaw/uLaw these days anyway.In short, playing a Sun .au file as follows:cat my_file.au > /dev/dspdoes not work. Instead, you may use the play script fromChris Bagwell's sox-12.14 package (available from the URLbelow) to play many different audio file formats.The script automatically determines the audio formatand does do audio conversions if necessary.http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/cbagwell/projects.htmlBlocking vs. nonblocking IO---------------------------Unlike OSS/Free this driver honours the O_NONBLOCK file flagnot only during open, but also during read and write.This is an effort to make the sound driver interface moreregular. Timidity has problems with this; a patchis available from http://www.ife.ee.ethz.ch/~sailer/linux/pciaudio.html.(Timidity patched will also run on OSS/Free).MIDI UART---------The driver supports a simple MIDI UART interface, withno ioctl's supported.MIDI synthesizer----------------The card both has an OPL compatible FM synthesizer as well asa wavetable synthesizer.I haven't managed so far to get the OPL synth running.Using the wavetable synthesizer requires allocating1-4MB of physically contiguous memory, which isn't possiblecurrently on Linux without ugly hacks like the bigphysareapatch. Therefore, the driver doesn't support wavetablesynthesis.No support from S3------------------I do not get any support from S3. Therefore, the driverstill has many problems. For example, although the manualstates that the chip should be able to access the samplebuffer anywhere in 32bit address space, I haven't managed toget it working with buffers above 16M. Therefore, the cardhas the same disadvantages as ISA soundcards.Given that the card is also very noisy, and if you haven'talready bought it, you should strongly opt for one of thecomparatively priced Ensoniq products.Thomas Sailert.sailer@alumni.ethz.ch