Re: Audio

[Michael Beattie <mickyb@es.co.nz>]

On Mon, 14 Sep 1998,  Raymond A. Ingles wrote:

> [...] 
> >   The same problems happens to me too. Is occures when my machine is low on
> >   physical memory and there seems to be not enough room to allocate the DMA
> >   buffer. When you start some big programs (memory consumption) like netscape
> >   and terminate them, does that solve it?? It does to me. Error displayed in
> >   /var/log/messages is something like "can't allocate DMA buffer" and looks to
> >   programs like "can't open device /dev/dsp". If so, please post again.
> 
>  Unfortunately, the PC ISA DMA controller can't address memory beyond the
> first 16MB. So, when a DMA buffer is requested, the kernel has to find a
> continuous chunk of memory that is physically below 16MB. If it can't find
> it, too bad.
> 
>  Launching a big program like Netscape and exiting will often clear up
> some memory if it forces some swapping. There's also a program called
> "swapout" from ftape which tries to clear out some DMA-able memory. (Since
> ftape uses the floppy controller and DMA, it also needs buffers below
> 16MB.)


Cheers, that explains some stuff.. :)

                       Michael Beattie (mickyb@es.co.nz)

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