OK, here's my problem. My empeg starts up fine. After 2-3 minutes, and sometimes after as little as 2-3 seconds, it starts to stutter. Badly. The player will then eventually hang after 10-15 more seconds of broken play. (It sounds like it's pausing on and off constantly.

On a reboot, it all comes up fine, and then it will sometimes do it again immediately, sometimes it takes a few minutes.

Here is a log:

Starting player
Hijack: intercepting config.ini

hijack_exec("/drive0/after/emphatic/emphatic"), rc=0 (okay)
opening display...
starting notify thread...
notify thread started (tid=1026)...
lyrics thread started (tid=2051)...
emphatic v1.10 (built Feb 18 2003 20:15:18) running as pid 78
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00 2003/04/01.
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Mar 26 2003
Vcb: 0x4086d000
q
player(76): memory violation at pc=0x020dd5d8, lr=0x00000000 (bad address=0x3548
9cec, code 2)
pc : [<020dd5d8>] lr : [<00000000>]
sp : bffffc6c ip : bffffc8c fp : bffffc88
r10: 0214d594 r9 : 02153c1c r8 : 02153c2c
r7 : 021569b8 r6 : 0214ca08 r5 : 021561b0 r4 : 00000808
r3 : 35489ce8 r2 : 00000809 r1 : 33333330 r0 : 0214ca08
Flags: nzcv IRQs on FIQs on Mode USER_32 Segment user
Control: C0D6517D Table: C0D6517D DAC: 00000015
Function entered at [<020dd4d4>] from [<020dd4a4>]
r7 = 02153C04 r6 = 02153B50 r5 = 021561B0 r4 = 0214CA08
Function entered at [<020dd3fc>] from [<020c4758>]
r5 = 00000003 r4 = 02156160
Function entered at [<020c46d4>] from [<02081438>]
r10 = 02153BF8 r9 = 02153C1C r8 = 02153C2C r7 = 02153C04
r6 = 02153B50 r5 = 00000003 r4 = 02156160
Function entered at [<02081410>] from [<02063e24>]
r5 = 02153C10 r4 = 00000055
Function entered at [<02063c98>] from [<020adb90>]
r10 = BFFFFEE4 r9 = 00000001 r8 = 0214D808 r7 = BFFFFEE8
r6 = 00000086 r5 = 00000002 r4 = BFFFFE84
Function entered at [<020adb50>] from [<020768d4>]
r4 = BFFFFE84
Function entered at [<020768b4>] from [<0202f6f4>]
r5 = 00000002 r4 = BFFFFDF4
Function entered at [<0202f684>] from [<0203168c>]
r5 = 00000000 r4 = BFFFFDF4
Function entered at [<02031464>] from [<02031794>]
r10 = 02031730 r9 = 00000000 r8 = 02112060 r7 = 00000000
r6 = 020000C0 r5 = 00000001 r4 = BFFFFF64
Function entered at [<02031730>] from [<020c8ea4>]
r5 = BFFFFF64 r4 = 00000001
Function entered at [<020c8dc8>] from [<02000104>]
r10 = 00000000 r8 = 00000000 r7 = 00000000 r6 = 00000000
r5 = 00000000 r4 = 00000000
hijack: removed menu entry: "emphatic"
Restored terminal settings
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Abnormal player termination
Player received signal 11
Starting bash.
empeg:/empeg/bin#


Any ideas? Please?

How is your hard drive cable doing? That'd be the first thing to check.

Matthew

Well, It SEEMS to be OK, I installed a new one about a year ago, at the same time I installed my second drive. Been cool ever since, until a couple of weeks ago. I unstalled 2.0 final dev, hijack 330, and all of a sudden I started getting strangeness, but that may simply be coincidence, or at least I believe so.

This is just a guess, but what is ReserveCache set to in your config.ini? Or is it set at all? Based on the output above, I don't think you have it set, and with emphatic running, that's bad. On the emphatic page, I suggest setting ReserveCache=48 (under the [Startup] section) so that emphatic has enough memory to run.

Having said that, it's the player app that's crashing, but I think that could be due to emphatic thrashing about in a very small memory space (whatever little bit the player leaves free by default.) Adding ReserveCache will save some room for user apps like emphatic.

I'm not sure this is what's going on, but try it out.

I have never changed that, so it definitely could be the issue. Thanks! I'll let you know.

Well, that seemed to be it! Thank you very much. It's been driving me crazy. I let it play for 15-20 minutes, and we'll see over the next few days if that's really it, but it sure looks like it.

Thanks again.

Yip, definitely it. Been playing for 4 hours straight now, not a single skip.

Cool. Glad I could help. Yeah, if emphatic had a nice automated install, I could go update the ReserveCache entry myself. This one comes up often enough that at the very least I should put it at the very top of the README, though.

Yeah, please add it to the README. I don't know whether this stuttering is emphatic-specific due to file access concurrency issues when emphatic is memory constrained, or whether it is a generic 3rd party application memory issue that emphatic has been more likely to hit than others. (Disk thrashing due to no swap?)

Oh, it's *in* the README. It's just not at the very top of the README.

As for the cause, who knows. Could be emphatic-specific but since I don't run any of the other "major" 3rd party apps, I wouldn't know. It's on my list of things to look at, though.

Bad drive cable.

Fortunately for me, this time it wasn't.... I really couldn't bear to have to order another one. I was even considering telling work I "needed" a laptop hard drive crimp tool and accessories.

Okay, /me goes to the FAQ entry about stuttering and updates it...