Hi Mark > Normally there isn't much you can do about this, other than put in some > other ATA disk controller or go SCSI, which I wouldn't recommend just > yet. Fortunately I don't think any of that is really necessary just yet. > These are good experiments though. On the NIC side, just unpluging the > cable would normally be enough to test. well - i didn't unplug the cable, but i did an ifconfig eth0 down, which AFAIK closes the interface entirely. i'm behind a firewall too, so i shouldn't be exposed to the usual babble of ill-config'd M$ machines. i'm willing to be disabused by someone knowledgeable here. > This is where I think we really start getting into PC chipset design. > (something I used to do for AMD.) Without belaboring the details, a good > card is capable of getting data to and from memory without much > processor interaction and very efficiently on the PCI bus. If it does > that, then what's left is basically how it tells the processor what's > going on, which is the interrupt service routine's job. However, even a > great sound card can be hindered by other parts of the PC (like other > PCI cards) usign the bus badly. > > You don't happen to be using a PCI VGA adapter, do you? I Cannot > remember at this point. i wish it were so easy - i have AGP. > > > the most success so far with the testing seems to be at 1024 - though > > > large file copies causes massive xruns at any rate (BTW: how large > > > would a 'large' file be?). > > This sounds like an interrupt problem, or else a bad set of hard disk > device drivers. If you sound card want to interrupt, it should get > serviced even if the hard disk was on the bus. Possibly the DMA > controller in this ATA chipset isn't very efficient.... this is sounding expensive... surely others in the LL audio world are using the "IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586/B/686A/B PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)" - has anyone anything good/bad to say about this (BTW: i did enable all the 'fix borken VIA' stuff in the kernel options). > I think I'd maybe try running Benno's disk latency test first. IF it > says you have long latency issues in your disk subsystem, then a newer > sound card isn't going to do you much good. it segfaults for me. it inspired me to try to use the jackd output as a guide for tuning the machine since i realised i wouldn't get far without some sort of measurement/instrumentation. so my current alternatives are; 1. post my results 2. learn gdb and try to get latency test to work 3. buy a new snd card. pray. 4. buy a PCI IDE card. waste a lot of time. pray. 5. buy a new mobo whose chipset is recommended. i'll post again when i've organised my test results. hopefully someone smarter than i can make some sense of it all (well audio-wise anyhow) and point me in the right direction..... thanks all for your assistance thus far R
