Linux 2.4 Sound Changes
2000-September-25
Christoph Hellwig, <hch@infradead.org>


=== isapnp support

The Linux 2.4 Kernel does have reliable in-kernel isapnp support.
Some drivers (sb.o, ad1816.o awe_wave.o) do now support automatically
detecting and configuring isapnp devices.
If you have a not yet supported isapnp soundcard, mail me the content
of '/proc/isapnp' on your system and some information about your card
and its driver(s) so I can try to get isapnp working for it.


=== soundcard resources on kernel commandline

Before Linux 2.4 you had to specify the resources for sounddrivers
statically linked into the kernel at compile time
(in make config/menuconfig/xconfig). In Linux 2.4 the resources are
now specified at the boot-time kernel commandline (e.g. the lilo
'append=' line or everything that's after the kernel name in grub).
Read the Configure.help entry for your card for the parameters.


=== softoss is gone

In Linux 2.4 the softoss in-kernel software synthesizer is no more aviable.
Use a user space software synthesizer like timidity instead.


=== /dev/sndstat and /proc/sound are gone

In older Linux versions those files exported some information about the
OSS/Free configuration to userspace. In Linux 2.3 they were removed because
they did not support the growing number of pci soundcards and there were
some general problems with this interface.