Re: Successful 4.0 install on z50; issue playing mp3s

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 9:41 AM, elijah rutschman <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 1:32 PM, Thomas Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
> [...]
>> a major issue i am experiencing is that when i tried to play an mp3
>> the music was recognizable, but there are lots of hesitations and wow
>> and flutter. for what it is worth, the problems seem significantly
>> worse using mpg321 compared to either madplay or sox (play), both of
>> which seem to work about equally poorly on my z50 here. the fractional
>> load figures displayed by top while playing the mp3 suggest that the
>> problems are not being caused by overloading. i found in the archives
>> for this list both reports of success and reports of failure playing
>> music on the z50 with different versions of netbsd-hpcmips.
>
> Hello,
> It sounds like issues with audio latency.  If you check the CVS
> history for 2008-07-31 05:58:06 @ http://pkgsrc.se/audio/jack-devel,
> the author mentions some "changes to audio_poll() and the pause
> attribute handling", in the netbsd sources to fix audio latency
> issues.  You could try building your own kernel from the latest
> sources if the kernel you are using is older than July 31st.  If you
> were going to do that though, I'd recommend setting up a cross-build
> environment on some more powerful computer.
>
> Regards,
> Elijah
> --
> http://elijahr.blogspot.com/
>

a few days ago i upgraded one of my z50s to to the daily build of
NetBSD 4 200810030002Z

then i ran

  # cd /usr
  # export CVS_RSH=ssh
  # cvs -d [email protected]:/cvsroot co -r netbsd-4 -P src/sys

which got me a src/sys/dev/audio.c identifying itself as version
1.215.2.4 20080203 19:08:41

audio.c seems presently at version 1.243, two bumps ahead of the
version 1.241 referenced in the pkgsrc commit message to which elijah
referred, and which i think i found here:

  http://cvsweb.se.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/bsdweb.cgi/pkgsrc/audio/jack-devel/Attic/Makefile

it looks like i can upgrade audio.c to version 1.243, compile a new
kernel and enjoy the benefit of the changes to audio.c. i'll try it
and post the results . . . eventually . . . since it might be a few
days before i get around to starting the compilation, and also 'cuz it
takes awhile to compile on the z50 :-). of course, as we all know,
anticipation is a big part of the fun!! :-)

if anybody is aware of a reason why my proposed audio.c upgrade will
not work, or if anybody has a better fix for the mp3 problem, please
post it! thanks!!

cheers!!

tom