Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Fri, 3 Jan 1997 23:43:58 -0800 | From | Steve VanDevender <> | Subject | DOOM sound bug workaround |
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For quite a while, I've had a problem with DOOM where the sound stops and the sound driver to emit messages like this after some random amount of play:
linux: Sound: DMA (output) timed out - IRQ/DRQ config error?
This has been happening at least since 1.2.13. Everyone's tried to convince me it's some kind of hardware problem, but I know that DMA works with my SCSI card completely reliably.
So recently I had the idea that I might try using strace on the DOOM sndserver process to try to get some more information on what might be happening when it stops being able to do sound. I renamed the sndserver process and replaced it with a shell script that invokes strace on the renamed sndserver directing the strace output to a log file.
When I strace the sndserver process I have so far _never_ had the sound problem happen again. If I put the original sndserver back the problem returns. If I use a shell script that instead just puts an intervening "cat" or "tee" between DOOM and the sndserver the sound problem also occurs. If I even just run strace and direct the strace output to /dev/null the problem doesn't occur.
So now I have a workaround for my problem. I've even let DOOM run in demo mode for as long as an hour with the straced sndserver and played lengthy games without any problems. But it's really odd that this should somehow prevent what could be a hardware problem or kernel bug from triggering.
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