AOS 4.1 update 3 - screeching noise when scrolling large CON: or KCON window

Yes, it's embarrassing that it has gone so long without being noticed by a betatester. Oh, well...

@tonyw

Just wondering... are many beta testern not real Amiga users? I mean, only testing specific things, not really using the OS for everyday activities (as far as possible)?

I have gotten the impression that no betatester listen to music other than possibly for a specific test that have been told to perform.

I ALWAYS listen to music, all the time. Mosly in AmigaAMP. So all tests I do is with music playing in the background. Maybe if this hasn't been tested very much - not long-term tested - in combination with huge USB transfers, disk transfers, low mem situations, high CPU stress - all the above at the same time, it's not surprizing that stuff like this slips through.

Example of what I can do an ordinary day:
Have a lot of programs open of course, like YAM, SabreMSN, AmIRC, Annotate, DOpus, AmigaAMP, OWB, and lots of background tools and commodities I can't remember.
+ Play music of course.
+ The start a large USB transfer.
+ Start to reencode videos (that has already transferred).
+ Watch another video to see what else I want to reencode.
+ While having this at the side I surf facebook until memory rus out.
+ Now I want to watch some new pics I have take with my camera so I start transferring that too over USB and open PicShow which quickly swollows 70MB (remember memory was already out).
+ I might also prepare to burn a CD/DVD at this point.

This is what AmigaOS (or any OS) should be able to handle on a daily basis. Do you test situations like this? Does it work?

It works most of the time for me but when it starts swapping in a situation like this it usually goes downhill pretty quickly, which is sad. I actually think update 2 was a bit more stable when swapping than update 3.

I can't speak for most of the testers, but I don't listen to music on my main system (the A1-XE). I use it as a development platform, compiling and testing system components, so I am frequently installing new OS components (drivers) and rebooting. I can't leave a CD running during that time.

In any case, if there's a radio or record playing, I stop working and listen to it, so it slows me down. I'm a single app at a time guy.

Someone who really stresses the system the way you do, would be a valuable beta tester. Wanna come and join us?

@tonyw

Well, the keyword here is time. Although I only have the Amiga and obviously use it as my main machine for development and recreation I guess it will take some effort to be a beta tester. Having to be sure not to run 3rd-party background app all the time and stuff like that.

I'm willing to test beta drivers or whatever for specific bugs that plague me and stuff, in case anyone would ever be willing to send me that, but like "full time" beta tester... Not sure about that. I also didn't join the X1000 program even though I will most certainly get an X1000 when it's done.

About music: I need it to satisfy my other brain-half which will otherwise get bored and start to ping the other half such that it never gets anything done and I become passivicated instead

I also don't listen much to music while testing, partly because I usually do it late at night, after my wife has already gone to sleep in the room next to me. And also partly because beta testing (even if you're not developing) often requires rebooting, and I hate having music cut short.

But apart from that, I can say that I didn't have this problem myself, I actually tried recreating it yesterday. I can provoke a little bit of "stuttering" (i.e. the sound pausing for short periods of time) while e.g. doing a "Dir ALL" of a large directory tree (in my test I used the root of my MP3 collection with all my CDs ripped), but only sometimes, not on every attempt. It might be connected with the song I play with MultiView (I usually use AmigaAMP, though), or with other unrelated things going on in the system.

But at any rate, it may not have been that obvious for us all to spot. (Not an excuse, more an attempt at explaining it in order to be aware of the risk of missing something like this again.)

Best regards,

Niels

@ChrisH
Nop, Mixer doesn't help. I am not even sure wether this is just software related. Even screendraging causes noise (not even playing music or anything else). I can even hear HD booting. Maybe interferences which shouldn't be there... ???

@gerograph

If you can hear screen dragging and HD loading when you are not playing music, it sounds just like electronic noise. It is usually not very strong (unless you turn up the volume a lot).

I get it a too, but very little with my CMI8738 PCI card. The A1 AC97 onboard makes more noise. The Prelude1200 on the A1200 clockport gave quite a lot of this kind of noise.

However, what we were talking about here was sound that is playing that is hacked into pieces and sounds awful.

I would like to wake this up again just to say that my scratching noises has pretty much completely disappeared!! DOpus scrolling is completely silent, only occasionally I can hear a tiny hick while moving a windows or scrolling a web page.

Reason: Unknown.
Possible reasons:
- I removed the uhci module from kickstart.
- I swapped places of the sound card and the NEC USB card to eliminate an IRQ "conflict", or rather IRQ sharing, between the NEC card and the SII0680 controller. (Sound card was never involved).

I'll reinsert the uhci module to see if the problem comes back.