[alsa-devel] Suggestion for getting alsa to use Conexant

[Takashi Iwai]

At Fri, 25 May 2007 09:37:44 -0700,
Tobin Davis wrote:
> 
> Just out of curiosity, has anyone with these codecs tried the linuxant
> software?  I looked at it briefly, and they are modifying my patch_conexant.c
> driver.  Some of the changes I may include in the main alsa driver (hey, I
> wrote the bulk, so why not), some of it would never pass kernel coding style.
> 
> I am kind of peeved that they don't bother to communicate with the alsa team,
> instead they take all of the hda code and hack it up, adding their copyright
> info to the code header (see header patch attached).  Takashi, what's your
> take on this?

It's GPL and they are allowed to that.  And I'm not surprised at all
by their action.  It's a typical one that many hardware vendors take.

The problem is that their modification would be never accepted because
of the binary-only part.  As long as this exists, Conexant will keep
doing in this way because _they_ need the control over this, not we,
the open-source community.

I think the best would to convince them to rewrite the code to
user-space daemon like slmodemd, so that they no longer need to touch
the kernel world.  This will make it eventually easier for them to
maintain their codes.  My upcoming hda-tools is developed also for
such a purpose...


Takashi

> 
> Tobin
> 
> On Fri, 2007-05-25 at 12:14 +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> 
>     At Thu, 24 May 2007 19:32:55 -0700,
>     Tobin Davis wrote:
>     > 
>     > I don't think this is limited to the Conexant CX20549 (5045) or the
>     > CX20551 (5047).  I have a laptop with a Conexant vendor ID of 2bfa.  The
>     > hda-intel driver picks it up, but uses the hda-generic configuration.
>     > 
>     > On the CX20549 & CX20551, I think I need to toggle a bit to enable the
>     > MFG portion.  I have a test board here, but the drivers are not
>     > detecting it, even without my patch_conexant code.  I'll look at the
>     > intel-80xm module, but it is written for the AC'97 bus specification,
>     > which is very different from the HDA bus specification.
>     
>     The bus design isn't a so big issue, but the problem would be rather
>     the difference of the codec/controller communication.  For example,
>     smartlink modem codecs (si3054) and compatibles are already supported
>     in patch_si3054.c.  As you can see, the code is really small.
>     
>     AFAIK, the conexant modem codec requires extra communication, a kind
>     of ACK, and thus incompatible with smartlink codecs.  Similarly, the
>     intel8x0m driver also doesn't support conexant chips because the
>     conexant codecs need different controls.
>     
>     Ideally, the whole encoding stuff should go to the user-space like
>     slmodemd.  I once tried to convince Conexant guys to do that, but they
>     disagreed because of lack of man power.  To me, it's hard to imagine
>     because keeping the kernel driver needs more effort...
> 
>     Takashi
>     
>     > 
>     > Tobin
>     > 
>     > On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 21:13 -0500, Victor Schneider wrote:
>     > 
>     > > How about being able to parameterize Alsa modules so that the intel 80xm 
>     > > module finds any hda modem that also acts as an Intel hda chip? I am 
>     > > referring to the Conexant combination modem and hda chip that gets 
>     > > identified as "Conexant Waikiki" by alsamixer, but that 80xm can't find as a 
>     > > modem. Giving the 80xm module the device:identifier value to override its 
>     > > detection of the Intel version of the Conexant hda modem might let slmodemd 
>     > > work.
>     > > 
>     > > _______________________________________________
>     > > Alsa-devel mailing list
>     > > Alsa-devel at alsa-project.org
>     > > http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
>     > 
>     > -- 
>     > Tobin Davis <tdavis at dsl-only.net>
>     > _______________________________________________
>     > Alsa-devel mailing list
>     > Alsa-devel at alsa-project.org
>     > http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
>     > 
> 
> --                                                                            
> Tobin Davis <tdavis at dsl-only.net>                                             
> 
> 
> [2 cxtheader.patch <text/x-patch; UTF-8 (7bit)>]
> --- ../../../../../../../alsa/alsa-project/alsa-driver/alsa-kernel/pci/hda/patch_conexant.c	2007-05-23 09:54:08.000000000 -0700
> +++ patch_conexant.c	2007-05-25 09:16:39.000000000 -0700
> @@ -1,10 +1,12 @@
>  /*
> - * HD audio interface patch for Conexant HDA audio codec
> + * HD audio interface patch for Conexant HDA audio/modem codec
>   *
>   * Copyright (c) 2006 Pototskiy Akex <alex.pototskiy at gmail.com>
>   * 		      Takashi Iwai <tiwai at suse.de>
>   * 		      Tobin Davis  <tdavis at dsl-only.net>
>   *
> + * Copyright (c) 2005-2006 Linuxant inc.
> + *
>   *  This driver is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
>   *  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
>   *  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or