"Patrick Grantham (aka. Mr Yahoo)" wrote:
> Please I would enjoy readin it.
First off, Creative has been "less than open" with their specs. At
first, they created a closed source driver. But they decided to
finally GPL it as they were not interested in development. The
kernel and ALSA teams have picked it up and are working hard on it.
Which brings me to the real issue, Creative's design of the boards
themselves (actually it was Ensoniq's). They make all kinds of
decisions that are largely non-PCI compatible -- like latching onto
the keyboard controller's interrupt for timing and other
interfaces. So their boards have "issues" on non-Intel chipsets, or
on newer Intel chipsets released after the design date. I know, I
got an original SBLive! card and it instantly bombed on my i440BX
mainboard in Windows 95/98! Later drivers fixed the issue.
That $200 card now sits on my shelf. I take it down on occassion
and check how far the Linux drivers have gotten. It works decently
in Linux, but still has issues in Windows. Although Creative has
"fixed" issues with newer Intel chipsets (although I hear the i845
takes issue), ViA/SiS chipsets still have problems. I have replaced
it with a SoundBlaster PCI128 (ES1371) which works perfectly in
Linux. Unfortunately, that card also also problems in Windows 98 SE
-- again, for the same reasons. If I even load the drivers, I
totally screw up my Windows 98 SE installation ("double blue screen"
at boot), which requires a full re-installation.
Creative really needs to "get on the ball" with better designs. I'm
sick of them designing their boards to violate PCI interface
standards for performance.
-- TheBS
P.S. I'm looking for a new PCI audio card that works in Linux and
doesn't have the issues that Creative cards have on non-Intel
chipsets.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org chat:thebs413 Engineer AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc. http://www.linux-wlan.org President SmithConcepts, Inc. http://www.SmithConcepts.com
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