[MPlayer-users] Not able to turn on DMA for DVD drive in RHL8.0

[Michael Osten]

On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 21:03, softrade wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> ----
> 

> Have just installed Mplayer on my PII400 box. I have an Intel SE440
> Motherboard and a 740Intel AGP Card. The performance is slow and I
> believe it is because I can not invoke the DMA on with either the hdparm
> -d1 command or echo command or by creating a harddisk file in the
> /etc/sysconfig directory.
> hdparm gives the reply operation not permitted. I know the drive &
> chipset is DMA capible as it runs software cinemaster and powerdvd OK
> under Windows 98 with DMA activated and is about the same speed as
> Mplayer is without the dvd rom in non DMA mode.
> 
> Has anyone had this problem and how did you fix it?? I have read
> mountains of docs and have run out of ideas.


man hdparm

-d     Disable/enable the "using_dma" flag for this drive.
              This option only works with a few  combinations  of
              drives  and  interfaces which support DMA and which
              are known to the IDE driver (and with all supported
              XT  interfaces).   In  particular, the Intel Triton
              chipset is supported for bus-mastered DMA operation
              with many drives (experimental).  It is also a good
              idea to use the -X34 option in combination with -d1
              to  ensure  that the drive itself is programmed for
              multiword DMA mode2.  Using DMA does not  necessar­
              ily provide any improvement in throughput or system
              performance, but many  folks  swear  by  it.   Your
              mileage may vary.

Its just a guess, but I'd place blame on that crappy video card.