I'm trying to get a K6-2 400 to run as a frontend only system.
K6-2 400
96 MB PC100 RAM
~4 GB HD
Integrated AGP ATI MACH 64 video (using GATOS drivers)
10/100 PCI NIC (operating at 100 full-duplex)
ESS Solo integrated sound (using esssolo1 OSS driver)
RedHat 9, updated RH9 kernel (2.4.20-9?)
Various packages from freshrpms.net, including mplayer
mythtv and xmltv packages from atrpms
So, after installing the GATOS drivers and ensuring that DMA was enabled
on the HD I played a divx 640x480 file with mplayer and it worked fine
using xvideo extensions. No choppiness and the audio was fine.
I have a mythbackend/frontend system that works fine so I configured the
K6-2 400 as a frontend only. I got the Illegal instruction problem and
followed the instructions in the FAQ to re-compile. I disabled the
de-interlacing option in the playback options setting as well.
After all that, mythtfrontend fires up fine and I can do everything
including looking at the previews in the watch tv section, deleting
recordings, etc.
However, the playback is choppy in a very odd way, it plays fine for a
second maybe two, then lurches to a halt then plays for a second or two
and lurches again. It never pulls out of this mode. (This is different
that the behavior I get on my main machine when it's too busy to
records two shows and play one back. That's a continuous choppiness
that's just a result of not having enough CPU time to do it all.)
The kicker is that CPU is 40% idle, no paging going on!
I verified that the amount of network IO going on during playback is
considerably less than I can get out of a wget from the frontend to the
backend running apache, so network IO shouldn't be the issue. (The
backend system was not busy either during my testing, so that shouldn't
be the problem either.)
To me it seems like some interrupt or another is being serviced and
causing the system to get slightly behind. I checked and I have no IRQ
conflicts in the system. /proc/pci lists 3 IRQs total and they are all
different. (I disabled the serial, parallel, USB ports in the BIOS so
they couldn't use any resources.)
I'm stumped... this machine sure seems fast enough to cut the mustard as
a frontend machine but I'm not sure how else to pursue this problem. I
might try compiling my own kernel or installing ALSA, but since mplayer
played that divx all right I'm probably grasping at straws going that
route.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks,
Aran
K6-2 400
96 MB PC100 RAM
~4 GB HD
Integrated AGP ATI MACH 64 video (using GATOS drivers)
10/100 PCI NIC (operating at 100 full-duplex)
ESS Solo integrated sound (using esssolo1 OSS driver)
RedHat 9, updated RH9 kernel (2.4.20-9?)
Various packages from freshrpms.net, including mplayer
mythtv and xmltv packages from atrpms
So, after installing the GATOS drivers and ensuring that DMA was enabled
on the HD I played a divx 640x480 file with mplayer and it worked fine
using xvideo extensions. No choppiness and the audio was fine.
I have a mythbackend/frontend system that works fine so I configured the
K6-2 400 as a frontend only. I got the Illegal instruction problem and
followed the instructions in the FAQ to re-compile. I disabled the
de-interlacing option in the playback options setting as well.
After all that, mythtfrontend fires up fine and I can do everything
including looking at the previews in the watch tv section, deleting
recordings, etc.
However, the playback is choppy in a very odd way, it plays fine for a
second maybe two, then lurches to a halt then plays for a second or two
and lurches again. It never pulls out of this mode. (This is different
that the behavior I get on my main machine when it's too busy to
records two shows and play one back. That's a continuous choppiness
that's just a result of not having enough CPU time to do it all.)
The kicker is that CPU is 40% idle, no paging going on!
I verified that the amount of network IO going on during playback is
considerably less than I can get out of a wget from the frontend to the
backend running apache, so network IO shouldn't be the issue. (The
backend system was not busy either during my testing, so that shouldn't
be the problem either.)
To me it seems like some interrupt or another is being serviced and
causing the system to get slightly behind. I checked and I have no IRQ
conflicts in the system. /proc/pci lists 3 IRQs total and they are all
different. (I disabled the serial, parallel, USB ports in the BIOS so
they couldn't use any resources.)
I'm stumped... this machine sure seems fast enough to cut the mustard as
a frontend machine but I'm not sure how else to pursue this problem. I
might try compiling my own kernel or installing ALSA, but since mplayer
played that divx all right I'm probably grasping at straws going that
route.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks,
Aran