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Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 04:04:57 -0500
From: Paul Winkler <zarmzarm@erols.com>
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Subject: Re: Lockups, one step closer
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OK, this is interesting. As long as I've got two OSes on my machine, I
might as well use them to troubleshoot each other, right? I just
downloaded ntrack, a shareware Win95 multitrack recorder. With no
special configuration, I installed it and recorded three stereo tracks,
2 minutes long. Full duplex worked fine, no lockups, no problems.

This leads me to believe that either it's not really a hardware problem,
or the Winblows 95 audio system knows how to work around the hardware
and Linux doesn't.

I also just got this email from Hannu S. at 4front:

> Some PC chipsets such as VIA and Intel VX have somehow broken ISA DMA.
> It's possible that the crashes caused by this will be fixed in the next
> OSS version (3.9.1i).

So at least that tells me that 4front believes the problem can be worked
around in the driver...

sterwill@io.nu wrote:
> 
> I've done a bit of testing, with the ISA DMA workaround enabled.
> I've found it makes no difference, but I also found something
> else.
> 
> Whomever suggested checking if full-duplex operation was the
> suspect was correct!

That was me. At least it sounds like we're having the same problem. I am
really tired of this... I bought a "full duplex" soundcard six months
ago and I have yet to record a single song.

> Well, anyone got any suggestions for a Free multi-track hard-disk
> recording program?  I've looked at a few, but none had source
> code (after this mess, I'm never using audio app bins again) or
> were missing some basic features.  X-based would be nice, but
> as long as it did full duplex and 8 tracks or more, ncurses or
> command line would be fine, too.

I think we've run through all the possibilities... EXCEPT:
if you're willing to tackle the task of porting SGI apps to Linux, which
may involve some serious library weirdness, you might look at this page:
http://reality.sgi.com/employees/dscott/audio.apps/public.html

I noticed 2 multitrack recording apps on that page: Ctrack and
Multitrack (by Terry Weiss, not Boris Nagels... apparently unrelated to
the linux Multitrack I have). Whoops! I just checked and this Multitrack
is binary-only, or at least I can't find a link to source. Ctrack might
be binary-only as well. But it may be worth mailing the authors to see
what they think about releasing the code... Ctrack does not look to be a
very active project, as it's not even mentioned on the author's
homepage. I think most reasonable people would be happy to give away
their little-used old source code. Who knows.

Let me know if you find anything useful!

Regards,

PW

