TJ Olaes wrote:

So, I'm attempting to write the driver for the eClaro card for a couple of reasons, one of which is that I currently don't have sound on mine.

So... is there some kind of test harness framework for new drivers?

No. You test drivers by trying to use them.

I have no prior idea how to move forward to build this thing, so I'm snooping around in the oxygen source files and trying to copy things that look like they make sense.

All the basic boilerplate code already is in oxygen_lib.c. What's left for you are the _interesting_ parts where you have to know what you're doing.

For instance, I noted that there's mention of an "AK4396" related to output. I assume this is some kind of chip

Yes, this is some kind of chip. As the DAC for the front outputs (as mentioned on HT Omega's website), a quite important one.

and I saw in the Claro code that something called "ak4396_init(...)" is called, so I just copied that line and pasted it into the eclaro_init(...) function I'm writing.

The other Claro cards have four AK4396 chips. The eClaro has only one and handles the other six channels with a CS4362 chip. This is more similar to the Xonar DX (so you might want to get inspiration from xonar_cs43xx.c), but the eClaro obviously uses SPI instead of I²C because that's the only protocol that the AK4396 supports.

I have no idea how I'm going to test this short of just compiling the kernel and booting into it.

You should compile the sound driver as a module, then you'll have to reboot only when it crashes. ;-)

It might be more productive for me to write the driver, if you are able to compile your own kernel and to test it.

Regards, Clemens