Stability

TJ

I've been trying to place an old computer back into service as a video
player, piping the signal to a largish CRT TV set. Not because I have
any particular need for it, just because I wanted to see if I could.

The computer is some seven years old, with an 800 MHz Duron processor
and 512MB of RAM. It should do the job just fine, not taxing its
abilities at all. Mandriva 2008 installs just fine - or seems to. I
know, because I've done it several times now. The problem seems to be
one of instability. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't.
Different times I've had Kaffeine, KDE, and Mandriva Update all crash,
leaving me locked up with a hard reset the only way out.

This computer used to belong to my brother, who used it with Windows
98SE until his death four years ago. It was a home-built machine, sold
on Ebay after the builder received a better one for Christmas. My
brother claimed Windows was stable for him, but a comment of his made me
wonder. I bought the computer I'm using now a few months before his
death, and he remarked once that he hoped the AMD Athlon XP processor
worked better than his Duron. I dismissed that at the time as being
Windows' fault, but now I'm not so sure. Considering the problems I've
had with Mandriva, I now think there's some obscure hardware problem
somewhere, and always has been.

Too many people jump to the conclusion that the OS is bad, when it
probably isn't so much at fault at all. It would be easy to blame the
Linux software, if it wasn't so rock-solid on my newer, more capable
main computer. It was certainly easy to blame Windows four years ago,
even though I knew from personal experience that Windows 98SE, properly
managed, can be very stable.

I had a point in here somewhere when I started writing this. I guess
it's that we all need to try very hard to avoid all that
conclusion-jumping.

TJ

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Jim Beard

TJ wrote:
> I've been trying to place an old computer back into service as a video
> player, piping the signal to a largish CRT TV set. Not because I have
> any particular need for it, just because I wanted to see if I could.
>
> The computer is some seven years old, with an 800 MHz Duron processor
> and 512MB of RAM. It should do the job just fine, not taxing its
> abilities at all. Mandriva 2008 installs just fine - or seems to. I
> know, because I've done it several times now. The problem seems to be
> one of instability. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't.
> Different times I've had Kaffeine, KDE, and Mandriva Update all crash,
> leaving me locked up with a hard reset the only way out.
>
> This computer used to belong to my brother, who used it with Windows
> 98SE until his death four years ago. It was a home-built machine, sold
> on Ebay after the builder received a better one for Christmas. My
> brother claimed Windows was stable for him, but a comment of his made me
> wonder. I bought the computer I'm using now a few months before his
> death, and he remarked once that he hoped the AMD Athlon XP processor
> worked better than his Duron. I dismissed that at the time as being
> Windows' fault, but now I'm not so sure. Considering the problems I've
> had with Mandriva, I now think there's some obscure hardware problem
> somewhere, and always has been.
>
> Too many people jump to the conclusion that the OS is bad, when it
> probably isn't so much at fault at all. It would be easy to blame the
> Linux software, if it wasn't so rock-solid on my newer, more capable
> main computer. It was certainly easy to blame Windows four years ago,
> even though I knew from personal experience that Windows 98SE, properly
> managed, can be very stable.
>
> I had a point in here somewhere when I started writing this. I guess
> it's that we all need to try very hard to avoid all that
> conclusion-jumping.
>
> TJ
>
Minor point, but have you tried the latest stable multimedia kernel?
2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdv

The 2.6.22.9-desktop-2mdv and 2.6.22.12-desktop-1mdv kernels
both are somewhat prone to lockup when I am simultaneously running
Firefox, Thunderbird, and Amarok. The incidence is lessened by
using the mm kernel above and Rhythmbox, but does not cure the
problem completely.

I upgraded on my 64-bit system rather than do a clean install, and
so much is working nicely that I am reluctant to wipe out all
settings and do a fresh install, but I suspect that old settings
or libraries are causing problems.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user-unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

Robert M. Riches Jr.

On 2007-12-21, TJ <TJ@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> I've been trying to place an old computer back into service as a video
> player, piping the signal to a largish CRT TV set. Not because I have
> any particular need for it, just because I wanted to see if I could.
>
> The computer is some seven years old, with an 800 MHz Duron processor
> and 512MB of RAM. It should do the job just fine, not taxing its
> abilities at all. Mandriva 2008 installs just fine - or seems to. I
> know, because I've done it several times now. The problem seems to be
> one of instability. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't.
> Different times I've had Kaffeine, KDE, and Mandriva Update all crash,
> leaving me locked up with a hard reset the only way out.
>
> This computer used to belong to my brother, who used it with Windows
> 98SE until his death four years ago. It was a home-built machine, sold
> on Ebay after the builder received a better one for Christmas. My
> brother claimed Windows was stable for him, but a comment of his made me
> wonder. I bought the computer I'm using now a few months before his
> death, and he remarked once that he hoped the AMD Athlon XP processor
> worked better than his Duron. I dismissed that at the time as being
> Windows' fault, but now I'm not so sure. Considering the problems I've
> had with Mandriva, I now think there's some obscure hardware problem
> somewhere, and always has been.
>
> Too many people jump to the conclusion that the OS is bad, when it
> probably isn't so much at fault at all. It would be easy to blame the
> Linux software, if it wasn't so rock-solid on my newer, more capable
> main computer. It was certainly easy to blame Windows four years ago,
> even though I knew from personal experience that Windows 98SE, properly
> managed, can be very stable.
>
> I had a point in here somewhere when I started writing this. I guess
> it's that we all need to try very hard to avoid all that
> conclusion-jumping.

Have you run memtest86 overnight (or better, for a few days)
to rule out RAM problems?

Over the years, I have seen a _few_ Mandriva kernels and/or
X releases that were unstable, especially when using GLX. I
have 2008.0 on only one testing machine, so I don't yet know
how stable 2008.0 is on my hardware. (So far, the
installation on the testing machine has been fine.)

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@verizon.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

Christopher Hunter

TJ wrote:

> The computer is some seven years old, with an 800 MHz Duron processor
> and 512MB of RAM. It should do the job just fine, not taxing its
> abilities at all. Mandriva 2008 installs just fine - or seems to.

I would suggest two things - run Memtest86 overnight to eliminate the
possibility of faulty RAM, and perhaps run one of the hard disk test
programs to check that it isn't bad. I would check the RAM first...

C.

lordy

On 2007-12-21, Robert M. Riches Jr. <spamtrap42@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Have you run memtest86 overnight (or better, for a few days)
> to rule out RAM problems?

Agree (well overnight anyway )

+ Prime95 running under wine (select torture test option)

(Can sometimes pick up things that memtest may miss)

Lordy

Christopher Hunter

TJ wrote:

> The computer is some seven years old, with an 800 MHz Duron processor
> and 512MB of RAM. It should do the job just fine, not taxing its
> abilities at all. Mandriva 2008 installs just fine - or seems to.

I would suggest two things - run Memtest86 overnight to eliminate the
possibility of faulty RAM, and perhaps run one of the hard disk test
programs to check that it isn't bad. I would check the RAM first...

C.

artix

TJ wrote:
> I've been trying to place an old computer back into service as a video
> player, piping the signal to a largish CRT TV set. Not because I have
> any particular need for it, just because I wanted to see if I could.
>
> The computer is some seven years old, with an 800 MHz Duron processor
> and 512MB of RAM.

I use exact same system on a daily basis. The only problem I experience
is that most movies do not play smoothly. mplayer reports too slow CPU,
and even after tweaking the playback with various mplayer options and
using different codecs, it still doesn't play smoothly enough. xine
sometimes works a bit better, but also has its problems. I think the
hardware may be a tad too slow for smooth playback.

--
artix
http://www.abstractart.ws _Abstract Art Directory_

Wes Newell

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:03:45 +0100, artix wrote:

> TJ wrote:
>> I've been trying to place an old computer back into service as a video
>> player, piping the signal to a largish CRT TV set. Not because I have
>> any particular need for it, just because I wanted to see if I could.
>>
>> The computer is some seven years old, with an 800 MHz Duron processor
>> and 512MB of RAM.
>
> I use exact same system on a daily basis. The only problem I experience
> is that most movies do not play smoothly. mplayer reports too slow CPU,
> and even after tweaking the playback with various mplayer options and
> using different codecs, it still doesn't play smoothly enough. xine
> sometimes works a bit better, but also has its problems. I think the
> hardware may be a tad too slow for smooth playback.

It should be ok for SD playback. It's certainly way too slow for anything
like HD, even 720P HD. I ran a Duron 1600 clock to 2000MHz and that took
over 80% usage doing HD. About 10% for SD.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php

artix

TJ wrote:
> I've been trying to place an old computer back into service as a video
> player, piping the signal to a largish CRT TV set. Not because I have
> any particular need for it, just because I wanted to see if I could.
>
> The computer is some seven years old, with an 800 MHz Duron processor
> and 512MB of RAM.

I use exact same system on a daily basis. The only problem I experience
is that most movies do not play smoothly. mplayer reports too slow CPU,
and even after tweaking the playback with various mplayer options and
using different codecs, it still doesn't play smoothly enough. xine
sometimes works a bit better, but also has its problems. I think the
hardware may be a tad too slow for smooth playback.

--
artix
http://www.abstractart.ws _Abstract Art Directory_

Wes Newell

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:03:45 +0100, artix wrote:

> TJ wrote:
>> I've been trying to place an old computer back into service as a video
>> player, piping the signal to a largish CRT TV set. Not because I have
>> any particular need for it, just because I wanted to see if I could.
>>
>> The computer is some seven years old, with an 800 MHz Duron processor
>> and 512MB of RAM.
>
> I use exact same system on a daily basis. The only problem I experience
> is that most movies do not play smoothly. mplayer reports too slow CPU,
> and even after tweaking the playback with various mplayer options and
> using different codecs, it still doesn't play smoothly enough. xine
> sometimes works a bit better, but also has its problems. I think the
> hardware may be a tad too slow for smooth playback.

It should be ok for SD playback. It's certainly way too slow for anything
like HD, even 720P HD. I ran a Duron 1600 clock to 2000MHz and that took
over 80% usage doing HD. About 10% for SD.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php