Re: [Plib-users] Video Lockups

[Christian M. <ma...@Ch...>]

Steve Baker wrote:
> 
> Richard Bytheway wrote:
> >
> > I am having a problem with plib 1.4.2 based applications on Win2000.
> >
> > I appears that the video is locking up, in that the display freezes, the
> > mouse stops moving, even pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't do anything. However,
> > if I have WinAMP running as well, playing ogg files, it keeps playing until
> > I hit the reset button (which is the only way out).
> >
> > This happens when running FlightGear, Map, Atlas and TuxKart, and takes
> > anything from a few seconds to about an hour to trigger.
> >
> > Video card is an AOpen GeForce 2MX, with the latest drivers from the AOpen
> > web site.
> 
> This can't possibly be a PLIB problem - in a properly implemented system,
> it should be impossible for an application program to take down the machine
> like that.

It might be a hardware problem. Eg. increased power demand for the
graphics accelerator during OpenGL drops the voltage and thus it gets
too low.

This should happen with other OpenGL (or Direct3D) applications as well.
And it should be extremely bad with benchmarks. Tried those?

But on the other hand: the GeForce2 MX isn't known to require that much
power.
Note: A big power supply (i.e. many Watts) doesn't necesary help. It's
important that it can "support" enough Amperes for every voltage.

>  * If WinAMP keeps running, so should other applications that don't
>    access the graphics.  You could write a script that sleeps for
>    (say) five minutes and then kills the PLIB application.  You should
>    be able to use the resulting debug stuff (a 'core' file or something?)
>    to see where PLIB is stuck.

Does Winamp play only the current file or does it also load the next one
from the playlist and goes on? (Perhaps you are only listening to the
buffer and not to winamp any more)

CU,
Christian

PS: All PLIB versions (+ FGFS) run very well on my W2K + GeForce2MX.

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