pci sxpansion

[Fluxpod]

Ah yes ACPI....If that did not help...I was looking at a few reviews and specs of that laptop.It doesnt really look very good for audio with that cpu and mainboard chipset.
What does the dpc latency checker tool reports? Posting a screenshot of that could reveal spikes.
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

[winger]

It shows in the 300-400 us range, The max over a couple minute period was about 500 us. It says this machine should be able to handle real-time streaming of audio and/or video with no drop-outs.

After a couple minutes I hit one peak of 1237 us. It shows 1000us as the base line to stay below.

It seems to cycle with low periods of 150 us and high periods near 500 with an occaionsal peak during the upcycle of 1000 or so. The cycle repeats about once a minute. In about 5 minutes I exceeded 1000 3 times.

[Fluxpod]

Thats helpfull.I would suspect W-lan-Bluetooth-The battery driver.If you do not need w-lan you could take out the card and maybe even reach for the bluetooth token(if removeable)The w-lan card usually sits in a mini pci-e slot.Will be a bit of work but worth a shot.The overall latency should not exceed 300 tho.

[winger]

There is a switch on the front of the system that turns off the wifi and blue tooth. It was on when I posted the last numbers. When I turn it off the latency is a little less variable. Tends to be around 300, peaking around 600 and going as low as 150 but pretty close to 300 most of the time.

[winger]

I loaded scope while running the latency monitor and the latency did not change. I then added 1 masterverb. After about 2 minutes I got pci overflow. Durin that time the pci latency held afound 300 with the highest time being about 325. I expected to see a spike when the overflow occured, but nope.

[Fluxpod]

There is a switch on the front of the system that turns off the wifi and blue tooth. It was on when I posted the last numbers. When I turn it off the latency is a little less variable. Tends to be around 300, peaking around 600 and going as low as 150 but pretty close to 300 most of the time.

Peaks to over 1000 still happening? It often helps to really pull out the w-lan cards.But for a non only music machine its not very nice.Maybe a clean install with just the bare minimum would help but honestly.A Laptop with an amd turion and nvidia chipset(it is a nvidia chipset right?I got conflicting search results) And probably a ricoh controller is not ideal for such tasks.

Cant really give more advice then that.Try some optimising and maybe a reinstall but thats about what can be done ime.

[Fluxpod]

I loaded scope while running the latency monitor and the latency did not change. I then added 1 masterverb. After about 2 minutes I got pci overflow. Durin that time the pci latency held afound 300 with the highest time being about 325. I expected to see a spike when the overflow occured, but nope.

It looks like the controller or the chipset report buffer overflow.Hard to say really.

[lagoausente]

I tried disableing the ieee 1394 device, no change. I tried it with ac, and with battery, still no difference. I'm running out of ideas here. The system is almost useless like this, I cannot reliably run even 1 Masterverb. Frustrating.

If you could run 11 masterverbs so the board allows you it.

I suggest a clean OS installation plus Rollback RX. Rollback Rx provides instatly "restore system" that works much better then windows one, and allows you to go foward and back when things get wrong. It requires more hdd space but is worth much more the windows system restore.

[winger]

With the wifi card disable, it seemst to peak between 600 and 700. I let it run over night and the max showed 950. I reset and got 601 after about 10 minutes.

I won't be resinstalling the os anytime soon on this one. I have another laptop available to me that was reinstalled with xp pro a while back but has hardly been used since. It is at a different location but I will get it back next week. I will try that one, which I can re-install anytime.

I have plans to use the wireless networking so I want it to run while wifi is enabled. I will be using a notbook to remote control the system using wifi.

[lagoausente]

With the wifi card disable, it seemst to peak between 600 and 700. I let it run over night and the max showed 950. I reset and got 601 after about 10 minutes.

I won't be resinstalling the os anytime soon on this one. I have another laptop available to me that was reinstalled with xp pro a while back but has hardly been used since. It is at a different location but I will get it back next week. I will try that one, which I can re-install anytime.

I have plans to use the wireless networking so I want it to run while wifi is enabled. I will be using a notbook to remote control the system using wifi.

What's 600 and 700?

Another thing to try, do you connect the expresscard and switch on the chassis before booting the laptop or when is running (hotplug)?

[winger]

600-700 microseconds.

I have been hot plugging it. I will try booting to see how it does.

[lagoausente]

600-700 microseconds.

I have been hot plugging it. I will try booting to see how it does.

You refer the DCP latency checker? I´m not sure if there is a relation between the pci overflow message and the latency check.
The tool I linked you what allows you is to increase or decrease the pci buffer for a device (I think it was that way), so the tool I linked really doesn´t have relation with the DCP latency checker I think..

[winger]

This is the link you gave me http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951. This is the "PCI latency Tool" version 3.1. It shows the bus and device numer, name and description of the device and it latency setting, then allows you to change it. My understanding of this latency is the latency timer. I think this is timer ticks which I have been assuming is microseconds. Nothing about buffer sizes unless you are asuming latency here means buffer size. Did you post something else I missed?

My current settings are scope and pular II are set to 128, SD host adapto 64. EEE1394 128, but I disabled this device in device manager. All others are default timer values.

The checker I was referring to was the latency checker that fluxpod sent http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
that gives a graphic display of measured pci latency time.

I am re-installing scope now to see if I can get any better results.

[winger]

I uninstalled and reinstalled. Started adding masterverbs. Loaded 5 and let it be for 30 minutes. No overflows. Been adding a new one every 10 minutes or so. Been running an hour now, 8 masterverbs and still running!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Fluxpod]

Sounds good! What else did you change?

[winger]

When I loaded the 10th master verb I got an error about dsp limit exceeded. I did the reload and it loaded and worked. After about 20 minutes the system locked up. Muse would not even move. Now I need to see if I can reproduce that and see how stable it is as some reduced usage level.

[winger]

Tried loading up and starting over, failed with pci overflaw with 5 masterverbs and everything hung up and had to power down and start again. Started with 1 master verb at a time. got overflow with 3 masterverbs and only a few minutes. Seems like there is some random factor that when right I can run quit a lot but usually it can do very little.

[winger]

It has to be something with the way things are loaded, maybe at boot time. This time I got pci overvflow with only 2 masterverbs.

[lagoausente]

I doesn´t worth if the values on Pci latency tool are buffer or latency, more buffer should give more latency, and more latency should be more fuffer (I think)
What I know is that usually is recomended to drease values for the devices you don´t care and increase a bit the value for the soundcard. 128 is a good value.

Regarding the boot.., I think you are right, there are a lot of services that windows load at start, and maybe only ofter after some time will have less work on idle.
But a question here, the DPC latency check show you worse values for drops when you cannot load 2 regarding when you can load 8 masterverbs? Is DPC tool usually for this issue?

Have you tried comparing between hot-plug or boot the laptop with the chassis alreadly working and connected?
Have you system restore enabled?

[winger]

I tried hot plugging and starting with it on at boot time. Not obvious difference.

I tried something new. I pulled the harddrive, and installed a new one. Loaded xp pro, sp2. Then installed scope 5.0, then the latency tool. Still could not get more that 1 to run. So it is not something loaded on the machine, since this is the simplest config I could get. I tried setting scope to 128, 200 doesn't matter. It is clear that it is possible to get 10 or more masterverbs to work, it is not clear why it only happens once in a large number of reboots.

Will be gone for a couple days again and when I return I will have a different laptop to try.