On 09/02/2007 10:03 AM, Piotr Makowski wrote:

Ah, I'm so desperate that I'm even ready to pay the proper programmer.. or maybe we could collect some money from people who would like to run their maya's on linux... I have done all that I can - written the letter to esi, contacted ALSA development team. I'm really disappointed. Or... maybe someone is already talking with esi about writing those drivers?

The card is NOT SUPPORTED! Isn't it the top priority for alsa programmers?

Well, the thing is -- "ALSA programmers", like most of the time in open source, are much less of a coherent entity than they are a collection of random individuals doing what they need or want done.

I very much only speak for myself and in the capacity of having done mostly just some fairly peripheral ALSA stuff anyway, but the tone of the message that Claus posted to the list rather annoyed me. A quote:

http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2007-August/002666.html

Yet, I have to say that it is exactly the somewhat ignorant attitude that turns us and quite a number of other vendors "off" in supporting the ALSA developer community better.

Heh. ESI supporting the ALSA developer community? No, the idea here is that the ALSA developer community (for some useful definition of this mythical entity) would be supporting ESI's customers.

This offer of support even comes largely free. All the developer needs is _something_ to get started, to get far enough to at least know what they need to ask of the offered engineering contacts (well, that, and the hardware, but a lender will generally do).

Producing this "something" takes some of ESIs resources but it doesn't need to be many even for a small company, and what they are getting in return is Linux support for their hardware, free for evermore after that initial slight cost.

However, next quote:

Unless we have to do that to achieve something we want to achieve, we simply can't do that.

Here we have ESI saying that supporting their customers who'd like to use their hardware under Linux is not something they want to achieve.

Which, don't get me wrong, may be perfectly sensible. I myself hear of more and more Linux in the (semi-)pro market but that's no doubt partly attention skew and I ofcourse do not know about ESI's own view of their customers, existing and potential.

But senseability aside, what it does boil down to for me personally is that ESI can go <bleep> themselves.

If any of the capable developers had the hardware, things would've probably been different since at that point it's also just about scratching personal itches but without it's mostly about providing free support for a company that just said outright they're not at all interested. Yes, well...

Rene.

On 09/02/2007 07:50 PM, Adrian McMenamin wrote:

They've actually said they'd make their engineers available to the person writing the device driver.

If you feel you'll be okay getting a driver going starting from nothing but an email address, great!

Especially given that hardware would need to be supplied -- which ofcourse to some degree means committing upfront -- I would want to first flaunder around on my own a bit while judging whether or not I'd be capable in the first place and judging what information I'd need from the contact. I also expect the same holds for more subscribers so if you _are_ willing to start under these conditions, I'd say go for it.

I'm quite tempted to step up to the wicket on this one, and volunteer to do it. But I think there are probably better people out there...

I doubt it. There are only a few people on this list experienced enough to be able to say they'll be able to get a good result upfront and since they haven't been volunteering, I'm afraid you're as good as it gets! :-)

First thing is getting the hardware I guess. I'm quite sure that once things are working at least basically, there will be help available from this list.

Rene.

On 09/03/2007 10:44 AM, Adrian McMenamin wrote:

On 02/09/07, Rene Herman rene.herman@gmail.com wrote:

...

If you feel you'll be okay getting a driver going starting from nothing but an email address, great!

Especially given that hardware would need to be supplied -- which ofcourse to some degree means committing upfront -- I would want to first flaunder around on my own a bit while judging whether or not I'd be capable in the first place and judging what information I'd need from the contact. I also expect the same holds for more subscribers so if you _are_ willing to start under these conditions, I'd say go for it.

If you'd bothered to talk to the company rather than spoit

[ ... ]

I didn't "spoit" and certainly not in the message you are now replying to. Earlier I said the pre-conception as though ESI would be supporting ALSA instead of the other way around rather annoyed me, and it did. Moreover, while I only speak for myself I seemed to notice a similar sentiment in at least one other list member and while we were just sitting here trying to not offend anyone, Piotr was growing desperate.

After giving up on the "just sitting there", things seem to be moving again. As said, great if you are going to take it!

Rene.

On 09/21/2007 10:17 AM, Clément Guedez wrote:

Sorry not have answer before, I check my mails so late. Also from the architecture Ctirad explains, making a driver for the Maya44 is 'doable', the VIA envy24ht chip is already support, so it would be easier as with the WT192M. The things to do is to fine the documentation of the codec Wolfson WM8776 (join) and adjust the front-end as I do for the WT192M. It's not much work, but it seems that's only I²S bus support on this codec and not I²C, and I don't how I²S is actually implemented in linux kernel or alsa. Also I have some work to finish on the ESI WT192M (db scale for level, some missing input). But if you want any help it's ok.

Thanks much the reply. I'm not actually working on this. I thought Adrian was going to take it, but I guess not. There's an offer for hardware and developer contact from ESI and you'd be a great candidate. Would get you a nice Maya44 card... :-)

Rene.

On 09/03/2007 12:42 AM, Ctirad Fertr wrote:

Nice ;) However, in this case it's probalbly not needed at all. The Maya44 is based on well known Envy24HT-S with a pair of Wolfson WM8776 codecs. Thus it should be quite simple to add suport into the snd-ice1724 driver.

Well, that's certainly useful information. Clement, I see you recently added support for the ESI Waveterminal 192M to snd-ice1724. Would you perhaps be up to adding support for the ESI Maya44 as well, working with Piotr for the needed information and testing?

Rene.