Oh AC97 Audio Driver, Where Art Thou?
Stephen B. - January 27th, 2007
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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:
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)?
…sort of. This is just a quick post to apologize for the long absence of new content and to relay a quick update. The hardware in my normally-faithful BeOS PC finally gave up the ghost 2 weeks ago, after threatening to for some time. Dealing with some nutty deadlines at work, I hadn’t had time to properly deal with the problems and just crossed my fingers, hoping things would keep running just a *little bit longer* – no such luck. On the plus side, I’m now back up and running sweet, sweet R5 again (nothing makes me appreciate it as much as being such with Windows and OS X for two weeks), my beloved dual P3 having been replaced with an AthlonXP. It’s actually been something of a step backwards in terms of responsiveness/”teh snappy(tm),” but the extra heat will be nice this time of year. Stay tuned for a return to something (hopefully) resembling regular updates!
A developer listed as “The BeSly Team” recently posted a new version of aspell, an Open Source spell checking application/library. While aspell support has been integrated into several GUI programs on other platforms (the GAIM instant messaging client, for instance), the BeOS port of aspell is a command line tool. The recent update of the port reminded me that there are a few relatively simple ways to make use of this handy tool without resorting to the terminal – read on for a few tips and tricks for combining aspell with the GUIey goodness of BeOS.  
DaaT, of IsComputerOn fame, has spotted an interesting recent post on Bernd Korz’s blog about native DVD playback in ZETA. In the post, Bernd mentions that a developer has recently ported several pieces of software related to DVD playback and he includes a screenshot of the ZETA MediaPlayer application playing a DVD. I asked Bernd if the DVD support was added to MediaPlayer itself – or at the media_kit level – and his response was was that it was implemented “in the good old BeOS way.” Besides allowing DVD playback without the need for VLC, this could potentially allow ZETA users to rip DVD video and encode it in XviD/DivX, without any additional software.
This past weekend, Orlando, Florida was the site of the 3rd WalterCon, the April Fools joke that has turned into an annual Haiku conference. Details are popping up around the web – post-WalterCon articles have appeared on HaikuNews, IsComputerOn, and OSNews; there is also an extensive photo gallery on the WalterCon website. This year’s WalterCon also received some attention from outside the usual BeOS / Haiku community. Most notably, Jem Matzan of The Jem Report dropped by WalterCon and he has posted a great article about the Con on his site. In addition to providing a nice summary for those of us who couldn’t go, Jem has also written one of the most fair and accurate BeOS-related articles that I’ve seen from someone who doesn’t use the OS.
Hot on the heels of WalterCon 2006, a winner has been announced in the Haiku Icon Contest – as reported by IsComputerOn and OSNews. The contest, which we reported on back in August, seemed to be a big success – there were sixteen entries to vote on in total and the high quality of the submitted icon sets meant that the voting was certainly no easy choice. Now that the voting has ended, the winning icon set is: Stippi.. It does quite a nice job of reproducing the style of Be’s original R5 icons, and out of the submitted entries, it appears to be one of the clearest at small sizes. Due to some confusion over the contest purpose, it should be noted that the winning icon set isn’t going to become the icon set for Haiku as-is. Rather, the winning set will be used as a guide/recommendation for creating the eventual Haiku icons (as described in the Haiku Wiki).
It’s taken me a shamefully long time to notice, but Sikosis posted the latest installment of the Haiku Podcast – Episode 6 – waaay back on October 8th. Why shameful? Because this episode includes an interview with yours truly – now you all get to hear why I’m a writer and not a radio host. In addition to the interview, Siksosis also gives a rundown of the latest news and announces a new BeBits app of the month: DreamChess. Thanks, Sikosis!
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