From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Fri Jan  8 16:32:27 1999
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To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Cc: "Benjamin GOLINVAUX" <golinvaux@benjamin.net>
Subject: Re: Hi - need some help? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 08 Jan 1999 11:48:20 +0100."
             <002e01be3af4$69eca420$47010180@pcbg> 
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 1999 10:30:26 -0500
From: Paul Barton-Davis <pbd@op.net>
Reply-To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Sender: alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz
Precedence: list

>Will it mean we'll get a huge executable running THEIR environment or
>register-level specs to write an ALSA driver ?

In the case of the Pulsar, these two results are not as opposite as
you might intend to make it seem. The Pulsar isn't a general purpose
DSP board. It has 4 onboard SHARC's running XTCsound, Analog Device's
"port" of Csound to the SHARC. As such, you need to think of as
something closer to a second computer connected (fortunately) via the
PCI bus instead of an ethernet. Fiddling with the hardware level of
the Pulsar, based on my understanding, is completely irrelevant: the
board is *designed* to run XTCsound, not to be programmed in some
arbitrary way at the h/w level. Instead, you program it using Csound
opcodes, which have nothing to do with the hardware at all. Its very
elegant. 

Of course, the question of the layers/applications on top of the
communication protocol with the XTCsound firmware is a good one, and
there seems to be no reason why anyone should have to be stuck with
Creamware's own implementation of a GUI for the board.

--p

