PSARC 2008/261 EOF: Sound Blaster Pro driver sbpro

[Garrett D'Amore]

Roland Mainz wrote:
> Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>   
>> This case was approved yesterday.
>>     
>
> Erm... did you check whether this driver may be needed by software
> emulators ? For example the only sound driver which AFAIK works in Bochs
> with Solaris as guest is "sbpro" (see
> http://www.koders.com/cpp/fid1239096CB8FECB28659D1411619E101856D78C07.aspx
> ; and did you check "qemu", "VMware", "Parallels" etc. yet ?).
>
> ----
>
> Bye,
> Roland
>
>   

Yes, for some of these, sbpro is required.  But the mainstream VMs have 
moved on to newer emulations:

Notably:

* VirtualBox: emulates AC'97
* Parallels: emulates AC'97
* VMware: emulates AudioPCI, audio not supported on Solaris today -- may 
add AudioPCI driver for it in the future
* VirtualPC: Microsoft product, does not support Solaris (at least 
officially)
* qemu: May require sbpro or audiopci -- some evidence that it may also 
support ac'97.  (Vanishingly small market share.)
* bochs: Does anyone actually *care*?  It requires OSS in any case, so 
would not represent a regression.  (Notably the sb16 emulation in bochs 
is very close to unusable due to heave CPU requirements.)

    -- Garrett