Forget 666mhz the SAM freezes

Something hasn't quite been right with my machine but I couldn't quite put my finger on it... until I settled down to play The Last Remnant tonight

I began to watch the screen blanker... I noticed at times the drawing on the screen was slowing right down to practically stopping for just more than a second...

I began to count... it's the same time frame... not seconds but counting at a reasonable pace to 24...

Like I am typing into this window, it doesn't update the screen but after 1 second or so all the letters shoot out...

Please don't tell me there is something wrong with the board? What could be upsetting the timing like this?

It never crashes because of this... but the cpu just seems stick at whatever it is doing every 24 counts...

weird huh?

Any Ideas? I'm about to go to bed soon so won't be able to check back for about 17 hours after work...

@Slayer
Personnally, I don't have this problem on my sam board. All is ok.
Blanker run fine and text typing is ok too ...
I think there's something wrong with your Amiga but it's maybe not the sam ... maybe memory ? HD ?

@Slayer

do a ram test

@LiveForIt

thanks for ya suggestions guys, I think I discovered what is wrong... I deleted SWAP partition and It doesn't freeze one moment...

I never wanted virtual memory anyway!

LOL

adios!

@Slayer

I use a SWAP partition on my SAM and A1 here and i have never seen your kind of problem.

@ZeroG

Yes, I just realised the problem hasn't completely disappeared... eliminating the SWAP partition has improved it quite considerably though...

there is no freezing when I am typing in this window now, for example...

I did notice that double clicking on the ibrowse icon did create a pause though, as with moving around 800 files from one directory into another on the same partition...

could it be related to the HD?

it's a new 160GB SATA 2 Harddrive - 16MB Cache

I don't think it's a memory problem, all memory problems always result in a guru or similair... well, in my experience anyway...

I was ftping in the background all day today, however when that finished I did some tests and the cpu was still freezing every 24 ticks...

I removed the SWAP and now it's hardly noticable...

anyway, I gotstogotobedwaveforthemomentandthanks

@Slayer

UDMA not enabled?

@Slayer

Sounds like your HD is running in PIO mode, which is default with all shipped systems. This is a safety measure, as there have been some problems with certain HDs and UDMA modes.

You can enable it by setting the sii3114ide_xfer variable in UBoot to GGGG, the driver will then select the best UDMA mode for any connected devices.

Simon

@LiveForIt
@Rigo

Yes, darnit, I had looked at that idetool command too pondering on it like I had forgotten something, then just moved on to another mindless act of misdirection? LOL I had forgotten about all the tweaking I had done on the A1 that involved the UDMA and yes, better to set it in the shell than the gui...

I am relieved, it will explan why the freezing was predictable... the transfer from the other machine was a constant 550k each time the buffer would right there would be a freeze I'm guessing...

When I stopped that and did some tests, it would only freeze when something accessed the Harddrive over a certain threshold of data amount or fragmentation or whatever...

Very Good, I'm almost certain this is the problem too... very happy and also think... well this baby is going to fly along after work today...

thanks for pointing out the obvious!