SND_AI2S(4)

📦 version 15.1, in freebsd 14.5, freebsd 15.1

🎧 SND_AI2S(4) — bestie, it's the Apple I2S audio driver page 💅

ok so real talk, this is from the powerpc Kernel Interfaces Manual — like, the slice of the man pages that lives over in PowerPC land. Pull up a chair, we're gonna go through the whole thing. ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

snd_ai2s — the Apple I2S audio device driver. that's it, that's the vibe. she drives audio. 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so if you wanna compile this driver into the kernel (yes, the old-school way, very main character of you), you drop these lines into your kernel configuration file:

device sound
device snd_ai2s

or — and honestly this is the low-effort slay — if you'd rather load the driver as a module at boot time, you just put this one line into loader.conf(5):

snd_ai2s_load="YES"

that's literally it. one line. 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

k so snd_ai2s provides support for the Apple I2S audio controllers — and when I say they're found predominantly in G4 and G5 machines, I mean those are the ones she was made for, no cap. 💻✨

she also rides with the snapper and tumbler codecs, which is important for reasons we're getting to in a sec. 👀

warning bestie: some machines (like, for example, the Mac Mini 🙈) do not have configurable codecs — which means they straight up lack hardware volume control. not a bug, just how those machines are built. 💀

🎀 HARDWARE 🎀

the chips this driver supports are giving:

  • Apple Tumbler Audio
  • Apple Snapper Audio

short list, but iconic. 👑

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

go read these next, iykyk:

🌈 HISTORY 🌈

the snd_ai2s device driver showed up in NetBSD 2.0, and then made her way over to FreeBSD 8.0. glow-up across operating systems fr fr. 🦋

👑 AUTHORS 👑

  • the snd_ai2s driver was written by Tsubai Masanari <tsubai@netbsd.org> 💜
  • and it was ported to FreeBSD by Marco Trillo <marcotrillo@gmail.com> 🫶

give them their flowers, they earned them. 🌸

💀 BUGS 💀

ok so, the thing to know:

  • Recording is not currently supported 😭
  • and operation with non-44.1 Khz audio is also not currently supported 💀

so bestie, please keep it at 44.1 and don't try to record, mmkay? 🙈

that's the whole page!! this one came straight out of the Debian build of the powerpc man pages, dated January 20, 2009 — and that's the cute lil' sign-off, hope you learned something, mwah 💋🎀✨

📦 where this page comes from