A few notes:
1) It was my understanding that xen did not emulate sound hardware, and
that sound was not supported in domU. Am I mistaken here? (Notably,
if we want/need sound, we should try to update Xen to something more
modern than SB16! An emulation based on either ESS 1371 or Intel ICH
would be far far preferable.)
2) Yes, I understand the difference between AC'97 and ICH. I know that
VirtualBox can emulate ICH sound. If qemu can be made to emulate the
same, then it will probably ensure that qemu will have good sound
support from many OS' going forward. (Only a few really old operating
systems fail to support ICH audio -- think Windows 95 and the earliest
version of Windows 98. Those older systems could support either
AudioPCI128 -- ESS1371 -- or ancient SB16/sbpro.) If qemu could lift
the ICH support from VirtualBox, so much the better. :-)
-- Garrett
Juergen Keil wrote:
> Garrett wrote:
>
> (added CC: to xen-discuss at opensolaris.org)
>
>
>> (Reply directly, as I'm not subscribed here.)
>>
>> As you may have seen, ARC recently approved my case to remove the
>> ancient sbpro driver Solaris.
>>
>> I'm intent on doing that, because it really helps with our OSS
>> integration effort, which I'm now leading.
>>
>> The problem is, will this impact qemu? I'm not sure of the answer.
>>
>
> It seems so; "Creative Sound Blaster 16" is one of the emulated
> hardware devices offered by qemu. Note that xVM/xen is using more or
> less the same qemu bits for emulating hardware in hvm domains (xen's
> qemu-dm process), so it seems xVM will be affected just like qemu is.
>
> See
> http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-unstable.hg?file/f681c4de91fc/tools/ioemu/vl.c
> ~ line 6879, the struct soundhw soundhw[] array for a list of (xVM/xen)
> supported audio hardware devices.
>
>
>
>
>> I *think* qemu emulates an older ESS1370 device, which is not supported
>>
> Yep.
>
>
>> (we *do* have a driver for the ESS 1371 though!)
>> I notice that Virtual
>> Box also has support for AC'97 hardware. Can qemu emulate AC'97 hardware?
>>
>
> AC'97 isn't the big problem when supporting audio in a system that has "AC'97"
> style audio. It's the type of audio codec controller chip interfacing to the
> AC'97 codec that matters. Common AC'97 codec controller chips are
> (older) Intel ICH chipsets (and compatible chipsets from nVidia / AMD),
> VIA chipsets, older ATI chipsets, SoundBlaster audigy, ...
>
> Each one requires a different "AC'97" audio driver.
>
>
> AFAICT, VirtualBox 1.6 supports emulating some "SoundBlaster 16" hardware
> (not sure if that is the old ISA style card or the newer SoundBlaster 16 PCI;
> ); might be supported by sbpro(7D).
> And it supports "ICH AC97"; which should be supported by Solaris'
> audio810(7D) driver.
>
>
>
>> If there is someone in the community that would like to coordinate with
>> me (not everyone please!) to ensure that qemu works with our OSS effort,
>> and isn't unduly impacted by the removal of the sbpro driver, please let
>> me know.
>>
>
>
