[linux-audio-user] hardware recommendations?

[Lee Revell]

On Tue, 2005-06-14 at 20:40 +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> Hallo,
> aljordan at maine.rr.com hat gesagt: // aljordan at maine.rr.com wrote:
> 
> > Interesting,
> > 
> > I have an Abit AV8 with an Athlon 64 3700+ and I must say that it has
> > been by far my most stable system in years.  I haven't had a single
> > crash and I am primarily using it as an audio workstation.  I was going
> > to give the board a high recommendation.  I would be interested to hear
> > the specifics of your hardware.
> 
> So basically I now only have things running, which I could have
> running with a much cheaper mainboard, and still I got sudden hangs
> and another curious kind of hang: If I switch off my monitor and leave
> it switched off for some time, like half an hour or more, I also got
> these hangs and freezes.
> 
> My best success then came yesterday, when in my despair I disabled the
> Xfree86 screensaver ("xset s off").

You did start by loading the "Fail Safe Defaults" in the BIOS, right?

I have an old ABIT KG7, of the infamous Via686A (or B, don't remember)
northbridge, that I had constant spontaneous reboot issues with.  After
trying everything I could think of, and basically writing off the
hardware as defective, I went into the BIOS and set "Super Bypass Wait
State" from 0 to 1 cycle.  Bingo, never locked up again.

So, make sure any suspect BIOS options (be especially wary of anything
with a marketing-speak name and no useful help) are set to the most
conservative settings.  This should be tried BEFORE pulling out all the
hardware.

Lee