[PC-BSD Testing] ASUS M2N-SLI nForce 560 sound vs 7.0.1 ia64?

[Walt Pawley]

On 10/27/08 11:12 PM -0400, Brodey Dover wrote:

>xcellent! Kind of...let us load the sndstat kernel module then shall we?

I can relate to "Kind of ..."    ;-)

># kldload sndstat

I tried that. It barfed. I mucked about some to see if I could
make sense out of why. No real luck but while examining the
handbook page on sound, it mentioned that when in doubt, do ...

root at amd64# kldload -v snd_driver
Loaded snd_driver, id=5

... which had the curious effect of sticking a sndstat "device"
into the /dev directory.

root at amd64# ls /dev
acd0       atkbd0     dvd        lpt0       nfs4       ttyd0.init ttyvc
acpi       audit      fd         lpt0.ctl   nfslock    ttyd0.lock ttyvd
ad0        bpf0       fido       md0        null       ttyp0      ttyve
ad0s1      cd0        fw0        mdctl      pass0      ttyp1      ttyvf
ad0s2      cdrom      fw0.0      mem        pci        ttyv0      ugen0
ad0s2a     console    fwmem0     midistat   pf         ttyv1      ugen0.1
ad0s2b     consolectl fwmem0.0   msdosfs    ppi0       ttyv2      uhid0
ad0s2c     ctty       geom.ctl   net        ptyp0      ttyv3      ukbd0
ad0s3      cuad0      io         net1       ptyp1      ttyv4      ums0
ad0s3a     cuad0.init kbd0       net2       random     ttyv5      urandom
ad0s3b     cuad0.lock kbd1       net3       sndstat    ttyv6      usb
ad0s3c     dcons      kbd2       net4       stderr     ttyv7      usb0
ad1        devctl     kbdmux0    net5       stdin      ttyv8      usb1
ad1s1      devstat    klog       net6       stdout     ttyv9      xpt0
ad1s2      dgdb       kmem       net7       sysmouse   ttyva      zero
ata        dumpdev    log        network    ttyd0      ttyvb

So, I did this ...

root at amd64# cat /dev/sndstat
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm: 64bit 2007061600/amd64)
Installed devices:

... not that I have a clue what it really means.

Does it not seem peculiar that an OS trying to support Joe User
would not at least do something to deal with sound? I'm used to
the idea that raw FreeBSD can be mind bogglingly opaque. But
I'm also used the idea of installing Mac OS X and having things
"just work." (Well, for the most part, anyway ;-))

Did I miss a checkbox or button sometime during the install or
something?
-- 

Walter M. Pawley <walt at wump.org>
Wump Research & Company
676 River Bend Road, Roseburg, OR 97471
         541-672-8975