nForce HARD FREEEZE with audio & gfx

[thormj]

I have an MSI-6353 motherboard (nForce1, integrated GF2MX, Audio, Lan) that freezes solid (no c-a-f1, no numlock, no nothing) if I use the video and the audio at the same time.
Mandrake 9.0, installed all nVidia stuff from the tar's.

Looking for tips. Things I've tried:
* disable AGP, Render, RenderAccel
* drivers 2960 & 3123 for XFree-4
* nvsound, OSS i810_audio, & ALSA's snd-intel8x0 rc6+ (cvs yesterday)

* Changing shared video memory size & AGP Aperture sizes. The bios indicates I can change the drive strength, but the setting has no effect.

Summary:
If I load the fbdev driver (Mdk Default), I can use any sound module fine.
If I load either nvidia video driver, but play no sounds (from KDE or anything else), everything is fine.

If I try both:
OSS Driver (either nvsound or i810): The sound will start skipping, after 30 secs of playing the Chromium game. If you then change window context (ctl-esc, alt-f4, etc), it will lock hard. As long as you don't change applications, the sound will stutter, but you will be ok.

ALSA: Machine will lock hard when playing sounds. No warning.

Everything's on board, so I can't change it (the sole PCI slot goes to my WinTV Studio card).... I noticed that the video card both share IRQ5.

I'm trying to get mythtv running, but I'll need both video *and* sound to be working!

Help!
TIA,
Thor Johnson

[Klaus-P]

Are you perhaps running a linux SMP-kernel? Sometimes it is the default kernel
selected by an automatic installation process. If your mobo is a single CPU
board and i guess it is, make also sure that its NOT a linux SMP kernel
and in your mobo's bios the "pnp OS" option is set to OFF.

" I noticed that the video card both share
IRQ5."

Hmm, manually setting or changing PCI irqs in the BIOS is risky and
should be handled with care.

[thormj]

I'm not using the SMP kernel. I can't change the irq's in the bios, unsless maybe I reserve IRQ5 for ISA...

I have pnp-os set to off.

I guess my next step would be to recompile the kernel to get rid of APM, APIC and the stuff, but my gut feeling is that the drivers (nvsound & NV_GLX) aren't sharing IRQ's properly.

Is there anything else I should look at?

TIA,
Thor

[Klaus-P]

Hmmm.. let me ask you a question about your win-studio card which i don't know.

Is this a multimedia card with an integrated additional sound card perhaps?

[thormj]

It's a TV-Tuner/Video capture card with FM Tuner and HW mpg1&2 acceleration. I know the mpg compression won't work (yet, there's a coupla groups working on it), but the BTTV/V4L drivers work fine with it.

Unfortunately, the audio gets routed thru Line-In, and mythtv's audio goes to line out, so I need to get ALSA full-duplex sound working as well.

I actually can watch tv w/o a problem (patch the mixer so line in goes to line-out, and not mess with the audio card anymore), but I want to record it ;)


During the testing, instead of using that card, I just played "Chromium" (2d game. Can use ALSA or OSS), and the sound f/x from it would lock it up.

I'm thinking about trying a USB sound doodad... anyone have a *cheap* workable one?

TIA,
Thor Johnson

[Klaus-P]

Well, i'm sorry, i cannot present you offhand any technical solution. But i think
it seems to be a "feel good"-idea relaxing for a while and
listening in video-off-mode a bit audio stuff of Jimmy Hendrix
or Led Zeppelin (sp) ;-)

Maybe somebody can explain me the usage of all those nice pre-designed
emoticons, i've never used or tested them as yet!


..................

After a break i needed, let me point out to the
linux kernel config option

General setup --> PCI access mode

BIOS, "direct" or "ANY", if "BIOS" is set then the
kernel will use the BIOS settings, "direct" , it will try to determine without BIOS, and "Any"
it will start with its own determination strategy
and if this fails it will use the BIOS.