From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Fri Jan  8 22:49:18 1999
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Date: Fri, 08 Jan 1999 18:22:06 +0000
From: Benjamin GOLINVAUX <golinvaux@benjamin.net>
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To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Subject: Re: Hi - need some help?
References: <199901081530.KAA20314@renoir.op.net>
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> 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.

Sorry... I've heard of some Analog Devices board shipping with some
custom CSound
but I didn't know those facts about Pulsar.

In fact, if the hardware is as flexible as csound an can operate in real
time, then its great...

(I mean more flexible than  just uploading a .sco and a .orc to the card
;-)

> 
> 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.

Hope they do agree with you.

Benjamin

