[mythtv-users] Waited 2 seconds... Still... Any more ideas?

Tony Maro tony at maro.net
Thu Dec 25 15:06:57 EST 2003


Well, I still can't watch more than 15 minutes or so of live TV without
a freeze.

Here's what the system is:

AMD 1800+
Shuttle AK32VN Mobo
512 MB RAM
Voodoo3 3500 w/ TV out
ATI TV-Wonder VE
SB Live Value
On-board NIC
Mandrake 9.2
Homebrew LIRC receiver
Both Frontend/Backend - no other frontends

Here's what I've tried so far:
*0.12 release
*0.13 release
*Compile from CVS (about 1 week ago)
*Disabled APIC in the lilo.conf (mobo refuses to disable apic
completely)
*Added second hard drive, just for ringbuffer, on secondary IDE channel
*Disabled all onboard components not in use (USB, Sound, floppy drive
controller)
*Recompiled my Kernel, trimmed to just what I need
*ensured proper cooling

Keep in mind when I say freeze... I mean the video freezes and the
console is scrolling "Waited 2 seconds"...

ONLY the frontend locks up and I have yet to have any other problems
with the system.  With the recent CVS version, I can now hit exit the
first time it locks up.  However, sometimes live TV will repeatedly
freeze after only a few seconds following this until I restart the
backend and frontend.  With the released 0.13 I would have to "kill -s
9" the frontend process to get it to go away and then could restart the
frontend and go on, leaving the backend intact.  Either way, scheduled
recordings go on just fine through the freeze...

It never freezes just playing recordings, however I have had it freeze
playing back a live-tv recording (watching live tv, recording comes up
and select "watch and record".)  Sometimes a pause or skip forward on a
recording will trigger a freeze as well, especially if at the end of the
file.

Heavier system load ensures that it will freeze quicker.  Transcoding in
the background and watching live TV is the fastest way to freeze the
frontend, but definitely not the only way.

If there's no ideas, I'm planning on swapping the mobo with a 1.2 GHz
AMD I have here.  The 1.2 tends to get hot, so I didn't want it in the
TV cabinet.  Not to mention I bought the Shuttle specifically for this
project.  I'm getting rather frustrated here (er, rather my wife is,
which is even worse ;-)  I see there have been a few other people
posting this problem, but developers have seen strangely silent on this
issue, offering no suggestions that I've seen other than requesting a
backtrace once.  Not faulting the developers, just assuming you guys
have never ever seen this problem first hand and aren't addressing it
right now.  And, yes, I've googled and googled-groups the issue and read
everything I could find.

-Tony




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