In yesterday’s post, I mentioned recently having upgraded my trusty R5 box to an AthlonXP – after running BeOS on a P3 450 and a dual P3 1Ghz system, this is downright modern hardware for me. Thanks to a bootable CD of the BeOS Max distribution, it only took a few minutes to edit my existing kernel with diskprobe and get it booting. What took longer, surprisingly, was obtaining an audio driver for the new motherboard – which contains the AC97 audio chipset.

There is a driver listed on BeBits, courtesy of Marcus Overhagen, but the download section only contains the following text:

I can no longer afford to maintain this driver for Zeta.

As yellowTab has got the source, and is distributing a modified version with their Zeta operating system, please contact them.

All downloads have been removed, please do not send me email.

Fortunately, a helpful user mentioned in the BeBits comments for the driver that the file itself is still available under the original download URL ( http://www.bebits.com/bob/13123/ich_ac97_1.4.zip ) – it’s just the links that have been removed from the BeBits entry (as well as the ability to add a third-party download link).

Finding the file was a minor inconvenience for me in this instance – but it’s a bit disturbing that R5 users have to jump through hoops now to obtain a driver for one of the most common audio chipsets in existence. Especially when the reasons for unavailability aren’t really clear. To paraphrase the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld: what is the deal with these disappearing drivers? Or, to paraphrase the slightly less-immortal (but significantly more vulgar) words of Sarah Silverman: what the (rooster) is up with that (excrement)?

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