PIII & p3bf & streaming video stability

[Volus]

Hi everybody,

I am trying to achieve a stable state with these new server
applications of the new millenium such as the launchcast from yahoo
(flash + media player). What would be my dream is the possibility to
hear non-stop - like a radio - the videos streaming from
launch.yahoo.com. Well, something simple, would you say. Not quite, my
(somewhat dated) setup doesn't seem to be up to the job. After some
time (but at least after 1 hour), the system freezes and occasionally,
the computer beeps. Really annoying. Here the setup:

- Enermax 550W as power unit
- PIII 600EB running @450 MHz
- P3B-F hardware revision 1.04, not overclocked (i.e. front side bus
@100 MHz), latest BIOS has been installed, no broken capacitor in the
sight
- One of the following graphic cards: SiS Pci 4 MByte, Xpert 99, Asus
v9550 ultra (I tried many combinations following advice from others),
the newest drivers installed
- Several memory setups, (2x128 MByte SDRAM-133 or 2x256 SDRAM-100 or
a combination of both)
- SoundBlaster Audigy Ex
- Realtek NIC
- Windows 2000 professional (I gave it a try with win98, too)
- a hard disk, a floppy disk, a cd-rw player, as you would expect
- accessorily (I took them off while looking for the problem): a
hardware mpeg decoder card, a firewire adapter

Well after having done many tries, I still have many ideas about what
could be wrong. (Should I change the Realtek card? Should I replace
the soundblaster card? Do I have a defective mobo? Is it a problem
with win2k and would xp help me out?) I suspect, however, that it
could be that the P3B-F + PIII has not been designed for a continous
streaming of data at 300 MBit/s that may strain the PCI bus. Thus the
question: should I stay with my PIII gear and look further for the
defective hardware or software component or should I throw everything
away and buy a newer motherboard & processor (p4 perhaps?...) while
hoping that these younger beasts can cope with the new technologies.
Thank you for your opinion.

Volus

 

[daytripper]

Hi everybody,

I am trying to achieve a stable state with these new server
applications of the new millenium such as the launchcast from yahoo
(flash + media player). What would be my dream is the possibility to
hear non-stop - like a radio - the videos streaming from
launch.yahoo.com. Well, something simple, would you say. Not quite, my
(somewhat dated) setup doesn't seem to be up to the job. After some
time (but at least after 1 hour), the system freezes and occasionally,
the computer beeps. Really annoying. Here the setup:

- Enermax 550W as power unit
- PIII 600EB running @450 MHz
- P3B-F hardware revision 1.04, not overclocked (i.e. front side bus
@100 MHz), latest BIOS has been installed, no broken capacitor in the
sight
- One of the following graphic cards: SiS Pci 4 MByte, Xpert 99, Asus
v9550 ultra (I tried many combinations following advice from others),
the newest drivers installed
- Several memory setups, (2x128 MByte SDRAM-133 or 2x256 SDRAM-100 or
a combination of both)
- SoundBlaster Audigy Ex
- Realtek NIC
- Windows 2000 professional (I gave it a try with win98, too)
- a hard disk, a floppy disk, a cd-rw player, as you would expect
- accessorily (I took them off while looking for the problem): a
hardware mpeg decoder card, a firewire adapter

Well after having done many tries, I still have many ideas about what
could be wrong. (Should I change the Realtek card? Should I replace
the soundblaster card? Do I have a defective mobo? Is it a problem
with win2k and would xp help me out?) I suspect, however, that it
could be that the P3B-F + PIII has not been designed for a continous
streaming of data at 300 MBit/s that may strain the PCI bus. Thus the
question: should I stay with my PIII gear and look further for the
defective hardware or software component or should I throw everything
away and buy a newer motherboard & processor (p4 perhaps?...) while
hoping that these younger beasts can cope with the new technologies.
Thank you for your opinion.

Volus

Whoa. Back the truck up.

You're gearing up for a 300Mbit/sec webcast?!?

Try two orders of magnitude lower - if you're lucky, have a broadband
connection, and are hitting peak throughput.

The PCI bus on the P3B-F could handle web traffic in its sleep, and both the
board and the 440bx chipset thereon have an awful lot of miles on them for
someone to suddenly point and say "it's broke".

You may have some weird one-off problem. It's not the design, I have three
P3B-F systems here that don't have any problems with streaming video...

/daytripper

 

[Paul]

Hi everybody,

I am trying to achieve a stable state with these new server
applications of the new millenium such as the launchcast from yahoo
(flash + media player). What would be my dream is the possibility to
hear non-stop - like a radio - the videos streaming from
launch.yahoo.com. Well, something simple, would you say. Not quite, my
(somewhat dated) setup doesn't seem to be up to the job. After some
time (but at least after 1 hour), the system freezes and occasionally,
the computer beeps. Really annoying. Here the setup:

- Enermax 550W as power unit
- PIII 600EB running @450 MHz
- P3B-F hardware revision 1.04, not overclocked (i.e. front side bus
@100 MHz), latest BIOS has been installed, no broken capacitor in the
sight
- One of the following graphic cards: SiS Pci 4 MByte, Xpert 99, Asus
v9550 ultra (I tried many combinations following advice from others),
the newest drivers installed
- Several memory setups, (2x128 MByte SDRAM-133 or 2x256 SDRAM-100 or
a combination of both)
- SoundBlaster Audigy Ex
- Realtek NIC
- Windows 2000 professional (I gave it a try with win98, too)
- a hard disk, a floppy disk, a cd-rw player, as you would expect
- accessorily (I took them off while looking for the problem): a
hardware mpeg decoder card, a firewire adapter

Well after having done many tries, I still have many ideas about what
could be wrong. (Should I change the Realtek card? Should I replace
the soundblaster card? Do I have a defective mobo? Is it a problem
with win2k and would xp help me out?) I suspect, however, that it
could be that the P3B-F + PIII has not been designed for a continous
streaming of data at 300 MBit/s that may strain the PCI bus. Thus the
question: should I stay with my PIII gear and look further for the
defective hardware or software component or should I throw everything
away and buy a newer motherboard & processor (p4 perhaps?...) while
hoping that these younger beasts can cope with the new technologies.
Thank you for your opinion.

Volus

There is the "Photoshop Bug". This is a hardware problem with one of the
busses on some Asus 440BX motherboards. But according to this post, it was
fixed in rev 1.04 or later. I'm not sure I could find any info on the
fixes for this on the Asus site for you.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=180420021631151809%[email protected]

I believe the Photoshop bug had something to do with a termination
voltage that didn't have enough bypass capacitance on it or something.
So, you could try doing more research on "Photoshop Bug", P3B, 440BX
or similar terms in Google.

For more info, check Roland's FAQ - the FAQ mentions the second link
as an example of a Photoshop fix, as applied to the processor on
a motherboard that wasn't fixed by Asus. See "Q: Photoshop hangs":

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_procupgrade_faq.html
http://www.turbotech.ch/articles2000/000815-p2bls_rework-01.html

The data rate coming in from launch.yahoo.com is probably 300 kilobits
per second. The figure you name is more bandwidth than an OC-3 optical
link.

The data stream will get decompressed and turned back into an image.
This will stress the processor/memory subsystem mostly, and unless
there is some DCT assist coming from the video card, the video card
will just be a frame buffer to hold the image. I wouldn't expect the
PCI bus or the network card to be an issue at this low data rate.
After all, people can run Hauppauge WinTV cards for hours on that
PCI bus without hanging.

I would test the hardware in bits and pieces. Memtest86 from memtest86.com
is a free test program that tests memory. The program will format and
prepare a standalone bootable floppy diskette. Once you set the computer
to boot from the floppy, the test will run and print any errors it finds
on the screen. There are some "extended" tests in memtest86, and I thought
someone posted here that the extended tests help check for problems of
the type like the Photoshop bug.

The processor and memory together can be tested with CPUBurn or Prime95
as well.

http://users.ev1.net/~redelm/ (CPUBurn)
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm (Prime95 - use "torture test")

For the video card, you could use one of the 3DMark programs, and place
it in "demo mode". Leave the program running overnight, and if the
program is still running the next morning, then your video card and
AGP bus are probably in good shape. I'm not aware of any better
tests than that. I once rigged up a Quake framerate test to run
continuously, but I think I would trust the 3DMark program more than
abusing Quake.

"Some lunacy with Quake2"
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&[email protected]

It may turn out, that some part of Windows or the Window Media Player
has a memory leak, and that is what is causing the problem. Have a
look in Google using "Windows memory leak" and see if there are any tools
to check for problems.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Volus]

It may turn out, that some part of Windows or the Window Media Player

has a memory leak, and that is what is causing the problem. Have a
look in Google using "Windows memory leak" and see if there are any tools
to check for problems.

HTH,
Paul

Hi Paul, hi everybody.

Thank you for your reality check concerning the PIII and PIII
chipsets. I made in the meantime a lot of tests and it turned out that
I had a combination between a defective motherboard and some memory
leaks in the Windows media player. I replaced the asus motherboard by
a supermicro P6DGU PIII motherboard. The PC is now a joy of
stability...

Best regards,
Volus