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PCMCIA Audio Support In NetBSD

Posted by timothy on from the listen-closely dept.

jmcneill writes: "NetBSD is now the first non-MS operating system to support PCMCIA audio adapters. A driver was added to the tree today to support the EigerLabs PCMCIA Audio Adapter. See the announcement for more details."

13 comments

  1. Even on /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Way to go Jared! You got Slashdotted even. ;)

  2. this is like by ArchieBunker · · Score: 0, Interesting

    How NetBSD had full USB support a year before linux. Maybe thats why my thinkpad runs NetBSD/win2k and not linux.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  3. Good Job ! by SirGeek · · Score: 1

    Now it will get ported into FreeBSD (my preferred BSD) and prolly OpenBSD.

    Nice to have native choices other than Open Sound although 20 bucks isn't that much to spend.

    --
    UPS Sucks
  4. Unfortunately... by edhall · · Score: 5, Informative

    The EigerLabs PCMCIA Audio Adapter has been discontinued. Also, the claim that this is the first non-MS OS to support PCMCIA sound is incorrect; there is a Linux driver for the CAC Bullet II, which is a PCMCIA DSP/sound card (an impractically expensive one at about $700 unless you really need its DSP) -- although it may well be discontinued also. (I'm a BSD fan, but I believe in giving credit where it's due.)

    EigerLabs' decision to discontinue their sound card is unfortunate, but I'm sure that now that a PCMCIA sound driver exists, it will be extended to work with other cards. There's a need for such things; even though almost all laptops have onboard sound, and many do a passible job of sound output, most are far too (electrically) noisy for useful sound input other than speech -- if they support input at all.

    -Ed
    1. Re:Unfortunately... by jmcneill · · Score: 3, Informative

      The CAC Bullet II driver hasn't been updated for any kernel version over 2.0.x (according to Mobilix.org), and was never shipped with the official kernel.

    2. Re:Unfortunately... by edhall · · Score: 1

      Yep. My guess is that maybe three people in the whole world ever used that card with Linux. Unfortunately, the places I checked for the EigerLabs card didn't have it any more, so unless there are a lot of NetBSD folks who have the card already or have better luck than I did finding it, this driver won't get much more use than that.

      Still, this announcement gives me hope that PCMCIA sound will become feasible on free Unices sometime soon. I'd love to be able to do field recordings with a laptop... without an MS OS.

      -Ed
    3. Re:Unfortunately... by GoatPigSheep · · Score: 1

      Apple's laptops are good alternatives for portable music uses

      --
      GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
  5. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    *BSD is dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in th recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    *BSD is dying

  6. Red Hat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How long before a Linux distro steals this code?

  7. Yea, that's why it has PCMCIA sound before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mac OS and Linux.

  8. cool! by zentex · · Score: 1

    Now I can have "The Microsoft Sound" (from WIN95) Play after I login :-)

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  9. Code theft by mr · · Score: 1

    The only way it is 'theft' is if you do not honnor the copyright. Given the lack of a core team across the 190+ linux distro market, someone will 'steal' code.

    At least with the BSD license, sharing is not mandated. So when someone shares back, you know it was because they wanted to share, not because they are forced to share.

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    If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
  10. MOD THIS DOWN PLEASE!! by egg+troll · · Score: -1

    Unfortunately this poster had the gall to go against Slashdot groupthink and suggest using a non-GPL'ed OS, and Apple at that. I demand, that in the spirit of Slashdot, this post be modded down immediately. Thank you, and God bless!

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    C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.