USB soundcard support in ARM linux


lhyanor

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Oct 5, 2008
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im not really into the arm linux kernel, so i have a question...
is it possible to connect an usb soundcard to the pandora? one which is supported by the x86 kernel? like Creative X-Fi or something? that would be really cool for audio production uses, especially since i believe that the pandora has no mic jack.. has it?
 
If the driver is part of the kernel or open-source, it should work fine. Just working on an x86 distro isn't enough to guarantee it will work on the Pandora, as many binary-only drivers are only for x86/x86-64.

As a side note, I don't know what the power requirements are on those, but you MIGHT need a powered hub to use it.
 
lhyanor said:
i believe that the pandora has no mic jack.. has it?
Sort of - it has a combined headphone/microphone socket, i.e. the jack has four conductors as opposed to the three you'd find on a set of stereo headphones. The extra band is for a microphone.
 
SteveM said:
lhyanor said:
i believe that the pandora has no mic jack.. has it?
Sort of - it has a combined headphone/microphone socket, i.e. the jack has four conductors as opposed to the three you'd find on a set of stereo headphones. The extra band is for a microphone.
Correct. It also has a dedicated line in (stereo, and much higher quality) on the EXT connector. We'll be selling bare connectors for those who want to hack together their own adapters. We will probably be selling full breakout boards as well.
 
that sounds really sweet. i think that makes the pandora THE machine for me :)

my concern about kernel modules was.. since there are even differences in the kernel options and modules between i686 and x86_64, how can i know which modules of the i686 survived into the arm kernel :D

oh man i cannot wait to get my hold on the device
 
Like I said above, if the module is open-source, it doesn't matter whether it's been built or not. The x86, x86-64, ARM, Sparc, and whatever other kernels are built from the same code. It's just a matter of whether or not the person who built the kernel enabled that particular option or not (or built that module, if it's not part of the kernel source).

In short, ALL of the open-source modules "survived" into the ARM kernel, whether or not they're enabled is a different matter (though Angstrom makes it easy to build your own kernels).

Note that if it's a closed-source module, you've got very little hope of it working on the Pandora.
 
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