On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 23:04:49 -0700 Leo Spalteholz <leo@thewoodpecker.ca> wrote:Hi, I'm running woody (well sarge now I guess) on a custom 2.4.18 and have a MS Optical 3 button USB mouse w/ mouse wheel. It works fine most of the time but when I do CPU or hard drive intensive things (like installing packages with Kpackage, copying files in konqueror) it moves very jerkily (like < 1 update per second). Why doesn't the mouse have real-time priority (or if it does, is there some way to make it move smoothly all the time)? USB support is compiled as a module BTW.My first guess is that you don't have DMA access turned on for your hard drive. I suspect you are using an IDE drive, right? If so, install hdparm and run the following: hdparm /dev/hd? Where "?" is the proper device for your IDE drive (most likely hda). Items to note are: - I/O support - using_dma If you find that I/O is at 16-bit, you may get a better performance with 32-bit (-c1). If you find that using_dma is off, you will most likely get better performance with it on (-d1). To turn these options on just use the appropriate option (listed above in parens) like so: hdparm -c1 -d1 /dev/hda Once you've tested the settings and are happy with them you will want to make then sticky (-k1) and add then to your startup as they will not survive a reboot otherwise.