Help me analyze my configuration

[Harold L Hunt II]

Willem Riede wrote:
> On 2003.05.25 17:20, Harold L Hunt II wrote:
> 
>>Willem,
>>
>>Actually, you are in perfect luck, as I have tested an almost identical 
>>hardware configuration to what you have above!  Unfortunately, you 
>>probably aren't going to like what I have to tell you.
>>
>>The quick answer is that you do have a performance problem.  One thing 
>>you can do to restore the performance of Cygwin/XFree86 (without fixing 
>>the underlying problem) is to use the Shadow GDI-based engine, rather 
>>than the default Shadow DirectDraw engine.  You do this by passing 
>>XWin.exe the "-engine 1" flag:
>>
>>XWin.exe -engine 1 -query my_remote_hostname_or_ip
> 
> 
> This I tried immediately, and it worked like a charm -- the cygwin-xfree
> performance is now very good.
> 

Good.  At least you have an interim solution.

> 
>>The real solution, or lack thereof, lies below.
>>
>>I have an Iwill KA266 with an Athlon 1.2 GHz chip, which was running 
>>Windows 2000 at the time.  I purchased an ATI All In Wonder 8500DV... 
>>hey, wait a minute, I gave a very good writeup of this in the archives:
>>
>>http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2002-12/msg00049.html
>>
>>So, I suspect that if you run any video playback software or anything 
>>else that uses DiretDraw, you will see very jerky and slow redrawing, 
>>indicating that this a problem with your video layer, not just with 
>>Cygwin/XFree86.  Try playing back a DVD or (if you have the All In 
>>Wonder) recording some TV and playing it back later.
> 
> 
> I re-installed the ATI video drivers and the media-center, and you're
> right, DVD playing is awful. I had actually not done that before -- I own
> a regular DVD player too so I watch them on my TV -- I used the 8500DV to
> watch TV while working on the PC, and that, as before, works just fine.
>  

Yup, that confirms that we basically have the same setup.

> 
>>You have to upgrade to the ATI drivers, which took me about 4 hours to 
>>do properly until the jerkiness went away.  You have to follow their 
>>instructions VERY carefully and you have to constantly check to see if 
>>Windows now thinks that the new drivers are installed.  
> 
> 
> How _did_ you get rid of the jerkiness? I have the latest drivers from the
> ATI website installed, and the device manager shows the correct properties,
> but as I said, the resuling jerkiness is horrible.
> 
> 
>>                                                       In the end, you 
>>might end up with a freezing problem like I had.  
> 
> 
> What I found earlier, is that you do not want to install the ALI (not ATI)
> chipset 4-in-1 driver on this combination. Totally unstable. The microsoft
> drivers for the chipset seem to do a fine job though. While a couple of
> hours is hardly enough to declare something stable, so far so good.
> 

Honestly, I don't remember how I got rid of the jerkiness.  I do know 
that I was messing around with the ALI and ATI drivers and I even blew 
away my Windows 2000 intall and installed Windows XP instead.

Luckily, my hard drive died that night after I got it all setup, so I 
got to set it up again on a new hard drive the very next day :)  That 
time I had somewhat mastered the art of getting the drivers correct, but 
that is when I noticed that certain graphics operations (Opening 
File->Print in any version of Adobe Acrobat Reader) would freeze the 
machine hard, every single time at exactly the same point.

> 
>>                                                    I ended up having to 
>>get rid of my ATI All In Wonder 8500DV, which was really a great card 
>>other than the fact that it froze my motherboard.
> 
> 
> I may have to do that too, if I decide I care about DVDs (probably not) or
> time-shifted video (PVR - which I do want to be able to do). Given that you 
> were not able to get it right, I don't give myself much chance :-(
> 

I think I would keep the 8500DV but get a new motherboard instead.  I 
had read before that the AGP support on that particular Iwill board was 
spotty, but I didn't care because I had never owned an AGP card.  Most 
other boards out there don't have the same types of problems and I am 
sure that Iwill has improved their AGP support in the past two years as 
well.

> But at least for now I'm enjoying the remote xfree access to the other PC.
> 

Excellent.

> Thanks for your help. Willem Riede.

Thanks for describing the problem.  It was kinda neat to see the exact 
same problem that I had happening to another user :)  I mean, it sucks 
that it happened to you, but it keeps me from thinking that I was just 
doing something wrong with my configuration.  :)


Harold