Jukka Marin writes:
> I was trying to run raplayer on Sparc, but it complains about being unable
> to open audio device (I think it wants to open /dev/audioctl).
> 
> I don't know anything about UNIX sound support in general, but it seems
> that most software is for Linux or Solaris these days, so maybe our
> sound system should be able to emulate at least one of those ... ?

We've had this go-round on port-sparc several times.  The audio system seems
to be based on the 4.4BSD audio stuff, which is pretty similar to the SunOS
4.1.x audio stuff in many ways (supported ioctl()'s, etc.).  But the audio(4)
man page describes "/dev/sound" and "/dev/mixer", which aren't implemented
on NetBSD/SPARC (or NetBSD/mac68k, the other NetBSD system I have here).
I'm not sure what other platforms besides NetBSD/i386 they are implemented on.

The idea was put forward in the last go-round that a "/dev/audioctl" (or the
compat_sunos equivalent) should be a link to "/dev/mixer", and that such a
"/dev/mixer" device should, on the SPARC port, handle the duties that the
SunOS "/dev/audioctl" device handles.

Personally, I'm somewhat amazed the SPARC audio stuff works at all  :-)
(Because the Sun stuff has arcana like a "/usr/src/sys/sun*/audio_79C30_intr.s"
file - different sun4c and sun4m versions, even).

	- Greg