Hello all ... please forgive me if this is a really simple question to
answer - I'm a new convert to NetBSD, and I haven't yet figured out 
where things are (previous experience is with Solaris and Linux)

Anyway, I have a motherboard with a VIA chipsdet (the does-everything
variety) which I've been tinkering with for the last year and a half
to put together as an MP3 system.  The motherboard has in-built
sound as part of the VT82C686A, however I've never managed to get it 
to work better than 22kHz 8bit under Linux because, quite frankly the
documentation and support for the chipset is all over the place ... 

I've recently installed NetBSD 1.5.2 on a scratch drive and have
booted into a fresh install ... I was quite pleased to see that on
boot the kernel detected and made murmurings about the audio device,
finding it as the auvia device:

|bahram: {37} dmesg
|NetBSD 1.5.2 (GENERIC) #3: Sat Aug 18 23:37:05 CEST 2001
|    he@hamster.urc.uninett.no:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
|cpu0: Intel Pentium (P54C) (586-class), 133.65 MHz
|total memory = 60992 KB
|avail memory = 51252 KB
|using 788 buffers containing 3152 KB of memory
|BIOS32 rev. 0 found at 0xfb2a0
|mainbus0 (root)
|pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1
|pci0: i/o space, memory space enabled
|pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0
|pchb0: VIA Technologies VT8501 MVP4 System Controller (rev. 0x02)
|ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0: VIA Technologies VT8501 PCI-AGP (rev. 0x00)
:
:
|auvia0 at pci0 dev 7 function 5: VIA VT82C686A AC'97 Audio (rev C)
|auvia0: interrupting at irq 12
|auvia0: NSN83 codec; 18 bit ADC, 20 bit ADC, Philips Incredible Sound
|auvia0: codec must support AC'97 2.0 Variable Rate Audio
:
:

... which seems to me that the device was found OK and initialised
properly ... and I have audio devices:

|bahram: {38} ls -al /dev/aud* /dev/sound* /dev/mixer*
|lrwx------  1 root  wheel        6 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audio -> audio0
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 128 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audio0
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 129 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audio1
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 130 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audio2
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 131 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audio3
|lrwx------  1 root  wheel        9 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audioctl -> audioctl0
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 192 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audioctl0
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 193 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audioctl1
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 194 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audioctl2
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 195 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/audioctl3
|lrwx------  1 root  wheel       6 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/mixer -> mixer0
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 16 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/mixer0
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 17 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/mixer1
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 18 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/mixer2
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42, 19 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/mixer3
|lrwx------  1 root  wheel       6 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/sound -> sound0
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42,  0 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/sound0
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42,  1 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/sound1
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42,  2 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/sound2
|crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel  42,  3 Oct  1 03:20 /dev/sound3

however if I run mpg123:

|bahram: {39} ./mpg123 sample.mp3
|High Performance MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 Audio Player for Layer 1, 2 and 3.
|Version 0.59r (1999/Jun/15). Written and copyrights by Michael Hipp.
|Uses code from various people. See 'README' for more!
|THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
|audio: Device not configured

If I get mpg123 to dump to a .wav file and try cat I get:

|bahram: {43} file sample.wav
|sample.wav: RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 16 bit, stereo 44100 Hz
|bahram: {44} cat sample.wav > /dev/audio
|/dev/audio: Device not configured.
|bahram: {45} cat sample.wav > /dev/audio0
|/dev/audio0: Device not configured.
|bahram: {46} cat sample.wav > /dev/audio1
|/dev/audio1: Device not configured.
|bahram: {49} cat sample.wav > /dev/audio2
|/dev/audio2: Device not configured.
|bahram: {50} cat sample.wav > /dev/audio3
|/dev/audio3: Device not configured.

... so I'm kind of stumped ... I'm not sure where to go next ... does
anyone have any ideas?

-- 
Malcolm Herbert                                This brain intentionally
mjch@mail.com                                                left blank