K7S5A w/ATI AIW RAD 8500 - DVD Playback sucks

Using W2KP with 256MB, a 1500+ Athlon, ATI AIW RAD 8500 w/128MB with
Firewire and Promise 133 PCI cards.

I pop in a DVD and the ATI player starts up but the image is very distorted
and snowy and the sound out of sync. The DVD plays a few seconds of the
first chapter and then stops. I have enabled DMA on the NEC 1300A to no
avail. Worked fine on the same machine and same hardware under XP but
trying it with W2KP has been successful. Any ideas on troubleshooting? I'd
hate to have to go back to "ET PHONE HOME" XP!!!!

TIA,

Eric

Hate to add to my own question. I feel I pushed my luck. Just before this
problem I was marvelling at how well the K7S5A has worked under both WIN98
and XP with lots of different cards and software (makes Abit and Gigabyte
look amateurish). That will teach me to marvel without keeping my fingers
crossed!+

Anyway, more data: Changing aperture from 64Mb to 128Mb helped somewhat
(found that suggestion in Google). VOB files played from the 250GB drive on
the 133 Promise controller do not exhibit these problems (Drive is a NEC
1300A DVD+-RW on the built-in IDE 2 controller. Not sure if it's master or
slave, but it's the only drive on the (40 conductor) cable. Gonna
Sandra-ize the unit now and see what the various benchmarks are. Sounds to
me like the DVD isn't putting data on the bus fast enough. Might switch it
to the free port on the Promise controller or disconnect the Promise
completely just to see if anything changes.

Eric


"Eric Wolfe" <> wrote in message
news:bnef96$jle$...
> Using W2KP with 256MB, a 1500+ Athlon, ATI AIW RAD 8500 w/128MB with
> Firewire and Promise 133 PCI cards.
>
> I pop in a DVD and the ATI player starts up but the image is very
distorted
> and snowy and the sound out of sync. The DVD plays a few seconds of the
> first chapter and then stops. I have enabled DMA on the NEC 1300A to no
> avail. Worked fine on the same machine and same hardware under XP but
> trying it with W2KP has been successful. Any ideas on troubleshooting?
I'd
> hate to have to go back to "ET PHONE HOME" XP!!!!
>
> TIA,
>
> Eric
>
>

On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 20:13:34 -0400, Knowing that it was a Hollywood
invention that lemmings jump off cliffs "Eric Wolfe"
<> wrote :

>Hate to add to my own question. I feel I pushed my luck. Just before this
>problem I was marvelling at how well the K7S5A has worked under both WIN98
>and XP with lots of different cards and software (makes Abit and Gigabyte
>look amateurish). That will teach me to marvel without keeping my fingers
>crossed!+
>
>Anyway, more data: Changing aperture from 64Mb to 128Mb helped somewhat
>(found that suggestion in Google). VOB files played from the 250GB drive on
>the 133 Promise controller do not exhibit these problems (Drive is a NEC
>1300A DVD+-RW on the built-in IDE 2 controller. Not sure if it's master or
>slave, but it's the only drive on the (40 conductor) cable. Gonna
>Sandra-ize the unit now and see what the various benchmarks are. Sounds to
>me like the DVD isn't putting data on the bus fast enough. Might switch it
>to the free port on the Promise controller or disconnect the Promise
>completely just to see if anything changes.
>
>Eric

This would make me suspect the video card or it's drivers?



>
>"Eric Wolfe" <> wrote in message
>news:bnef96$jle$...
>> Using W2KP with 256MB, a 1500+ Athlon, ATI AIW RAD 8500 w/128MB with
>> Firewire and Promise 133 PCI cards.
>>
>> I pop in a DVD and the ATI player starts up but the image is very
>distorted
>> and snowy and the sound out of sync. The DVD plays a few seconds of the
>> first chapter and then stops. I have enabled DMA on the NEC 1300A to no
>> avail. Worked fine on the same machine and same hardware under XP but
>> trying it with W2KP has been successful. Any ideas on troubleshooting?
>I'd
>> hate to have to go back to "ET PHONE HOME" XP!!!!
>>
>> TIA,
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>
>

"Shep©" <> wrote in message

> >Anyway, more data: Changing aperture from 64Mb to 128Mb helped somewhat
> >(found that suggestion in Google). VOB files played from the 250GB drive
on
> >the 133 Promise controller do not exhibit these problems (Drive is a NEC
> >1300A DVD+-RW on the built-in IDE 2 controller. Not sure if it's master
or
> >slave, but it's the only drive on the (40 conductor) cable. Gonna
> >Sandra-ize the unit now and see what the various benchmarks are. Sounds
to
> >me like the DVD isn't putting data on the bus fast enough. Might switch
it
> >to the free port on the Promise controller or disconnect the Promise
> >completely just to see if anything changes.
> >
> >Eric
>
> This would make me suspect the video card or it's drivers?

ATI video drivers are ALWAYS suspect, IMHO, but the funny part is that it
reads VOBs off the hard disk that have been ripped by DVD Decrypter just
fine. Now, that could be because the decoded/decryption has already been
done and the load on the CPU is lower or it could be any number of other
things. I am going to try a different DVD drive to see if that's the
problem. Disconnecting the drives connected to the Promise 133 made no
difference, although to be sure I should have jacked the card out of the
machine. I have not yet tried to load Decrypter on this incarnation. It
ran well under XP although I was not ever able to even get the DVD player to
install on that OS. I suspect you may be right in the analysis of the video
card drivers - maybe it's time to visit ATI's site for updates.

The DVD program is bundled with the ATI AIW 8500. If I yank it out, the DVD
player won't work so it's hard to investigate the options if it is the card
or the drivers. I just benchmarked the machine with Sandra 2004 and nothing
unusual showed up. The DVD benchmarks looked a little low but not unusably
low . . .

Thanks,

Eric