Re: DOOM sound bug workaround

Hannu Savolainen (hannu@voxware.pp.fi)
Tue, 7 Jan 1997 08:22:11 +0200 (EET)


On Fri, 3 Jan 1997, Steve VanDevender wrote:

> For quite a while, I've had a problem with DOOM where the sound stops
> and the sound driver to emit messages like this after some random amount
> of play:
>
> linux: Sound: DMA (output) timed out - IRQ/DRQ config error?
>
> This has been happening at least since 1.2.13. Everyone's tried to
> convince me it's some kind of hardware problem, but I know that DMA
> works with my SCSI card completely reliably.
DMA by a SCSI card is a completely different thing than DMA with a
soundcard. A soundcard requires every byte right in time or otherwise an
underrun occurs. DMA with a SCSI card doesn't have this kind of requirements.

It's very possible that some SCSI activity during sound playback causes your
problem. This is the case at least if you use a PAS16 soundcard together
with an AHA1542 SCSI controller.

Best regards,

Hannu
-----------------------------
Hannu Savolainen (hannu@voxware.pp.fi, hannu@4front-tech.com)
http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/voxware/hannu.html (my home page)
http://www.4Front-Tech.com/oss.html (Open Sound System (OSS))
http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/voxware (OSS Free/TASD/VoxWare)