Problem playing FLAC/DVD/hi datastream files

[Marinus]

Hi,

I am very new to Linux and have been able to set up my Slackware Linux quite well.
The thing that I can't seem to solve is this:

Whenever I try to play FLAC, DVD or other files that have high datastream (also occurs in WMV, but somehow MP3 is fine) all players (Kaffeine, Noatune etc.) tend to stall every second or so. This makes it impossible to play these files.
Sometimes FLAC plays fine, but as time progresses let's say after the third 4-minute long FLAC file the problem begins.
Sometimes, it's there from the beginning.

Could this be because of buffering? They all reside on the HD.

XP was always fully able to play them, no problems whatsoever.

My system: Celeron 1100 MHz, 256MB, 30 GB HD, Slackware 10.1.

/dev/hda1/_____ /ext2/total 950 MB/used 838 MB
/dev/hda6/usr__/ext2/total 7.4 GB/used 2.3 GB
/dev/hda7/opt__/ext2/total 1.9 GB/used 761 MB
/dev/hda8/home/ext2/total 16.0 GB/used 1.4 GB

Edit: I just installed TuxRacer and I have exactly the same problem...

Any idea's?

Thanks,

Marinus.

[Monkeh]

Is DMA enabled?

[Marinus]

Hi Monkeh,

how can I check that?

Thanks,

Marinus.

[Monkeh]

hdparm /dev/hda

[Marinus]

This is the output, DMA seems on..

bash-3.00# hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 3648/255/63, sectors = 30005821440, start = 0

Do you see something else here??

[Monkeh]

Except for the fact that it's a great deal larger than my server's drive, that's identical. There's me out of ideas..

[Marinus]

Okay, no prob. I learned how to get the hd parameters so thanks for that!

It's strange. You would think that an old game like tuxracer should run just fine.
All else, the system in general, works just great.
For example, OpenOffice (latest m122 snapshot) is ready in about 5 seconds....