---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tim Schmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sep 8, 2005 6:22 PM Subject: Re: [Open-graphics] Audio interface? To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > But let me ask a more basic question. What's the benefit of > > integrating sound into a graphics board, instead of just recommending a > > sound board that's known to play well under Linux or using what's on the > > motherboard? I'm not being sarcastic, I really don't know the answer to > > that. > > That, as a matter of fact, is exactly our question, and it seems to be > answered: No point in audio on OGP. Here's a couple thoughts (although I remember a few of these being hashed over in the beginning of the list)... One possible market is the home theatre one, where people need TV-Out or DVI (HDMI?) and audio out, likely in the form of SPDIF, Optical (for digital x.1) or a pair of RCA style stereo jacks. Nothing too fancy here, digital streams can basically just be forwarded to the decoded un-changed by the hardware (the driver may have to do some work on the format of the stream, but the hardware should be able to just shovel the data over the SPDIF or optical link), and stereo audio doesn't seem too hard. Another possible market is the sort of extra-thick clients... the PCs outfitted to handle 2 or more sets of monitors, keyboards, mice, and speakers. These macines are possible to build with off the shelf parts right now with a little fancy configuration, but they'd certainly benefit (in both cost and complexity) from a single PCI card that added an audio _and_ video head. For this market, and here I'm not sure what you can do Timothy, it may help if you could integrate a couple USB ports (os PS/2 I guess). The motherboard (or an add-in USB card) can certainly provide them itself, but I suppose it may ease configuration somewhat if all the devices belonging to a particular head had the same PCI ID or whatever. In other words, you may be able to make building this type of machine a plug-and-play operation, the key is giving the system enough information to know what keyboards and mice belong to what speakers and monitors, and I think that can only be done easily with some sort of controller (USB or PS/2) on the card as well. Just a couple things to think about. I'm certainly not suggesting you go either route (well, I'd like to see you go both, just not immediately), just thinking things through. --tim _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
