when SETI runs on my machine, I get pops and even distortion on my music (winamp, cooledit, whatever).
I have a soundblaster live card and just reinstalled my machine (winXP) but the problem cant be solved.
when running predictor- or climateprediction-units i don't get that problem, its only seti, and that since the first BOINC-seti!!!
I read in a forum of someone having the same problems (not here).
does anyone have an idea how to fix it?
it's really anoying and i don't want to quit seti...

thanx

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[b]phees solutions[b][br]
[img border="0" src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/stats.php?userID=1410" /]
[img border="0" src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/teamStats.php?userID=1410&prj=1" /]

did you use the latest Drivers from creative, and what Mobo, and at what Interrupt is your Soundblaster installed, i hope not 9, ...

ah, a german Member von TPR

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©

I can hear some mild noise from my speakers when I'm using a graphics-intensive app... are you running BOINC with the graphics or without?

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> when SETI runs on my machine, I get pops and even distortion on my music
> (winamp, cooledit, whatever).
> I have a soundblaster live card and just reinstalled my machine (winXP) but
> the problem cant be solved.
> when running predictor- or climateprediction-units i don't get that problem,
> its only seti, and that since the first BOINC-seti!!!
> I read in a forum of someone having the same problems (not here).
> does anyone have an idea how to fix it?
> it's really anoying and i don't want to quit seti...
>
> thanx
>

Try moving the sound card as far away as you can from the processor and graphics card. There's a small chance that it could be interference.

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You will be assimilated...bunghole!

> Try moving the sound card as far away as you can from the processor and
> graphics card. There's a small chance that it could be interference.

I would say there is a LARGE chance that it is interference. From what I have observed, Seti@home seems to utilize the memory bus differently than most of the other projects. One side-effect is that a bigger L2 cache on the CPU seems to help seti out more than any of the other projects. My 1.3 GHz Penium-M (1 MB L2 cache) can keep up with my 2400+ AMD on seti but lags slightly behind it on other projects.

This is the reason that you do NOT want to go cheap on your motherboard (if building your own computer). It takes a lot of good engineering to make sure the billions of electrical impulses flying through your motherboard every second don't leak into places where they aren't supposed to be. I have heard of people having luck solving thisproblem by moving the sound card to a different slot on the motherboard as Borgholio suggested. Other than that I guess you could do a general check for EM interference in the vicinity of your computer. For example if my cell phone is anywhere within about a meter of any of my equipment, I get very strong interference every few minutes. For a long time I thought it was something in one of my computers.

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A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
For rankings, history graphs and more, check out:
My BOINC stats site

I can definitely back up the "video card too close" claim because a laptop's components are squished so tightly together into a small box.

OT: Ditto with the L2 cache.

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Keep listening to that static! When you start hearing a message in there, you've either been at it for too long or you know you've got a WU that's pure gold! ;)

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On a related topic, I remember running Prime95 to stress-test my system awhile back, and I could literally hear it crunching. It was the most bizarre thing. This was on an Athlon XP 2400+ (Thoroughbred-B I think). My laptop (an AMD mobile) also likes to make processor noise, but only on battery! They've both always worked fine, and the noise is quite faint, but it's definitely there, and it's not coming through speakers in either case.

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That sure brings back memories. This goes a ways back - actually some 25 years! When we worked on PDP-11/45 mini computers we could identify the diagnostic that were running by listening to the noise over an AM radio. The memory tests like mem124 were particularly cyclic (and noisy).

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<img src='http://www.boincsynergy.com/images/stats/comb-912.jpg'>

> That sure brings back memories. This goes a ways back - actually some 25
> years! When we worked on PDP-11/45 mini computers we could identify the
> diagnostic that were running by listening to the noise over an AM radio. The
> memory tests like mem124 were particularly cyclic (and noisy).

Hmm... Were these devices FCC certified? :)

Actually I recall an article reported on slashdot a while ago where someone pointed a couple of microphones at a computer and could tell roughly what was doing by analyzing the sound. IIRC most of the sound was generated by some of the capacitors that supplied the CPU with power.

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A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
For rankings, history graphs and more, check out:
My BOINC stats site

> Hmm... Were these devices FCC certified? :)
>
> Actually I recall an article reported on slashdot a while ago where someone
> pointed a couple of microphones at a computer and could tell roughly what was
> doing by analyzing the sound. IIRC most of the sound was generated by some of
> the capacitors that supplied the CPU with power.
>
No, they were used on Navy flight simulators - quite advanced for the time period. No floating point processors so all the assembly language programming had to use "B" and "Q" scaling (a form of integer arithmetic to emulate floating point).

These training devices accurately simulated the complete aerodynamics, weapons systems, navigation, engines, avionics suite, motion system, and night visual system. All in assembly!

No shielding on any of the computers (that I ever saw). I believe Paul Buck worked the same program on the actual aircraft side of things. Fun times. I still can recall probably 90% of the PDP-11/45 operation codes from memory.

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<img src='http://www.boincsynergy.com/images/stats/comb-912.jpg'>

Back in the days of CP/M and Z80's I used to hook up a speaker to the A7 address line* (through a buffer and volume control, of course) and you could debug many programs just by their sound. At any rate, you knew instantly when it crashed... :)

*The A7 bit produced sound that had the best correlation with program activity.

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> No shielding on any of the computers (that I ever saw). I believe Paul Buck
> worked the same program on the actual aircraft side of things. Fun times. I
> still can recall probably 90% of the PDP-11/45 operation codes from memory.

I wish ... :)

No, in the Navy I did automated test equipment to test the aircraft avionics ...

When I was in civil service working for the Air Force I did ground station antennas (phased array - flat truck mounted antennas) and later the OTH-B radar ... The one with the "stand-by" dams to power the transmit site ... :)

Edit:

My first personal computer i did assembly and still remember 20 is JSR and 4C is jmp and 60 is rts ...

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>My first personal computer i did assembly and still remember 20 is JSR and 4C is >jmp and 60 is rts ...

LOL! 6502 Assembly language! What a blast from the past!

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> >My first personal computer i did assembly and still remember 20 is JSR and
> 4C is >jmp and 60 is rts ...
>
> LOL! 6502 Assembly language! What a blast from the past!

Oh, my ... you found me out! Yes ... 6502 binary code. Back then I could not even afford an assembler when I started out. I did it all in machine code and then typed it in ...

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> > >My first personal computer i did assembly and still remember 20 is
> JSR and
> > 4C is >jmp and 60 is rts ...
> >
> > LOL! 6502 Assembly language! What a blast from the past!
>
> Oh, my ... you found me out! Yes ... 6502 binary code. Back then I could not
> even afford an assembler when I started out. I did it all in machine code and
> then typed it in ...
>

wow, i feel young. i needed that *smiles*
my first was a Vic20 (which we killed numerous times before anyone told us about static electricity... they just kept replacing the poor thing). Finally someone figured that out, but by then it had to be replaced with a Commodore64. It still runs now.
*grin* so, anyone want to try to make BOINC run on it? of course it won't but that would take, what, 2 weeks to complete a SETI unit? or a month?

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S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club

I've got an Atari 400 and 800XL so let me put it this way... In order to load a 384 KB WU (Larger than a double-density 5&frac14;), you'd have to use cassette. The 410 recorder did 300 b/s, so you'd need 175 minutes of audiocassette just to store the WU. That's three hours, and you haven't even crunched yet!

Then you've got to write the output to tape - I think 24 KB is a fair estimate, so we're talking about another eleven minutes. Then there's the actual crunch... wanna guess how long it takes to do FFTs when you really don't have a dedicated FPU? Also keep in mind that you don't have a full 64 KB - It's more likely that you've got 48 KB + 32 KB ROM...

Still, if anyone out there has the Atari Assembler Editor, lemme know - I've got a pair of emulators...

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> Still, if anyone out there has the Atari Assembler Editor, lemme know - I've
> got a pair of emulators...
>
heh, i don't have the knownledge to do any of that, but i have all the accessories. the tape drive, the color okidata printer, the disk drive, i forgotten it all, it takes up a box that is a cubic yard.

i should probably check to see what all that is worth these days...

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S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club

Let me know what your pri&cent;e is.
Either way, I&apos;ve forgotten most of the 6502 assembly... I really should re-learn it.

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> On a related topic, I remember running Prime95 to stress-test my system awhile
> back, and I could literally hear it crunching. It was the most bizarre thing.
> This was on an Athlon XP 2400+ (Thoroughbred-B I think). My laptop (an AMD
> mobile) also likes to make processor noise, but only on battery! They've both
> always worked fine, and the noise is quite faint, but it's definitely there,
> and it's not coming through speakers in either case.

That's dust and air particles coming too close to the superheated CPU, evaporating in smoke, or pure hydrogen, depending on which particle you follow. ;)

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