[frogman]

What happened to the KernelEx thread?

[dencorso]

frogman, on 16 March 2011 - 10:00 AM, said:

What happened to the KernelEx thread?

How so?

[frogman]

dencorso, on 16 March 2011 - 10:36 AM, said:

frogman, on 16 March 2011 - 10:00 AM, said:

What happened to the KernelEx thread?

How so?

Cause I could have sworn there was a sticky thread.

[dencorso]

frogman, on 16 March 2011 - 12:35 PM, said:

dencorso, on 16 March 2011 - 10:36 AM, said:

frogman, on 16 March 2011 - 10:00 AM, said:

What happened to the KernelEx thread?

How so?

Cause I could have sworn there was a sticky thread.

Of course there *is* a sticky thread here: Xeno86: KernelEx 4.5 Final.
Or are you referring to the old, obsolete KernelEx 0.3.6 thread? That one is now lost, but I doubt you were thinking of it.

[frogman]

Yes, that was the one, under projects, thanks, just about to post something on it.

[jds]

rloew, on 15 March 2011 - 11:06 PM, said:

I don't think you need to uninstall FineSSE. It should not get activated unless other errors occur.

Well, so far, P3CPU has been perfectly stable. FineSSE is also installed.

With Flash 9r289, I have reproduced the "sound plays fully, then the video" effect reported by Larry some time ago (for testing, I use the Kate Bush "Army Dreamers" clip he gave at post 44). I want to see if this may be a CPU throughput issue, by running the same test on a genuine P3 with a reduced clock speed, say 200MHz. However, my P3 BIOS doesn't give me any options for the CPU clock multiplier, so I'll have to search for a utility that may do this.

Joe.

[skylights]

rloew, on 14 March 2011 - 08:48 PM, said:

jds, on 14 March 2011 - 01:51 AM, said:

I installed P6CPU.VXD on my P1 MMX machine (currently in storage due to renovations) a while ago but it didn't handle all the necessary instructions for mjpegtools, so I'll try FineSSE on this at the next opportunity.

Meanwhile, is P3CPU.VXD available to download, to test for the P3 issues (such as SSE) for later builds of Flash 9 (and 10, from the testing I did preciously)?

Joe.

P6CPU.VXD was written for GOM. It does not support Flash or mjpegtools.
I have not updated P3CPU.VXD since it did not seem to solve the Flash problems even though it Patched the Illegal Instructions. Misinterpreted Instructions cannot be detected or Patched using a Trapper, Code analysis is needed.
I have attached it for your experimenting.

NOTE TO EVERYONE! This is NOT Production Code. It is for Experimental use only.

How do I use p3cpu.vxd? (Sorry, total noob.) Thanks.

[jds]

jds, on 29 March 2011 - 01:52 AM, said:

Well, so far, P3CPU has been perfectly stable. FineSSE is also installed.

With Flash 9r289, I have reproduced the "sound plays fully, then the video" effect reported by Larry some time ago (for testing, I use the Kate Bush "Army Dreamers" clip he gave at post 44). I want to see if this may be a CPU throughput issue, by running the same test on a genuine P3 with a reduced clock speed, say 200MHz. However, my P3 BIOS doesn't give me any options for the CPU clock multiplier, so I'll have to search for a utility that may do this.

Well, I've never managed to find a utility to set the CPU clock. I know Intel tend to lock the upper clock limit, so perhaps nobody has bothered with a utility for this reason.

However, I've now installed Flash Player 10.1.82.76 (I also have KernelEx 4.5.1 installed) and the sync problem is gone. Depending on CPU needs, the video either plays as a series of still frames, or plays normally. No more of the "sound plays fully, then the video" effect. Flash Player 10.2.161.23_Beta_2 may also be OK (haven't tested), but 10.3.181.14 is no good (crashes).

Joe.

[erpdude8]

Joe, have you tested Flash 10.2.159 or some of the other 10.2 versions?
they're found on the Adobe Flash Player Archive downloads page.

[jds]

erpdude8, on 02 June 2011 - 06:08 PM, said:

Joe, have you tested Flash 10.2.159 or some of the other 10.2 versions?
they're found on the Adobe Flash Player Archive downloads page.

Well, I have installed 10.2.161.23_Beta_2 on my P3 and it's working fine, however, I haven't tried it on my P2 (with P3CPU.vxd and FineSSE23.exe) as yet.

Joe

PS. Well, that was interesting. I've just installed 10.2.161.23_Beta_2 on my P2 and again, the earlier sync problems are no longer evident. However, this version seems to give much higher priority to video content that version 10.1.82.76, so that there are many more still frames displayed when the CPU load is excessive, but at the expense of the audio, which is often somewhat choppy (for testing, I use the Kate Bush "Army Dreamers" clip URL given some time ago by Larry).

This post has been edited by jds: 04 June 2011 - 07:07 AM

[jumper]

FineSSE27a
Latest version will be posted here.

New Features:

• Support for multi-threaded apps
  
• prefetch (3D Now!)
  
• prefetch(n)tx -> prefetch (for better performance)

---

Image attachment for use above:
 FineSSE+.gif (217bytes)
Number of downloads: 2

This post has been edited by jumper: 13 June 2011 - 01:11 AM

[jds]

jumper, on 04 June 2011 - 10:26 PM, said:

FineSSE27a
Latest version will be posted here.

New Features:

• Support for multi-threaded apps
  
• prefetch (3D Now!)
  
• prefetchntx -> prefetch (for better performance)

Brilliant!

I'll try this tonight!

BTW, not directly related to this thread - can anyone confirm whether versions 1.1.* of VLC (using KernelEx, of course) can work on a P2, or do these require P3/P4 instructions? In any case, I'll try version 1.1.9 again using the latest FineSSE.

Joe.

Update:

OK, I've installed FineSSE27a on my P2 machine and all is well.

The first thing I tried was VLC 1.1.9, but again, this didn't work (I did find a reference in the VLC forums, to versions 1.1.* not working on P2 machines, which confirmed my suspicions about this).

I then tried the following clip : www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJt0LJZG2k
As before, Flash Player version 10.2 displayed many more frames on the P2 that did version 10.1.

Next I tried our reference clip : www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdHOm256N4&feature=related
Again, despite the improved video performance of FP 10.2, Kate's lovely voice unfortunately suffered from the choppy audio. So if it's a music clip you want to see/hear, you're better off (on lowly hardware) to use FP 10.1.

I did persit with more testing of FP 10.2, listening to some of Kate's more recent songs (eg. How to be Invisible, King of the Mountain, Pi, Joanni, etc). I found that if I paused the clip until it was fully buffered, often this would result in nice audio (I presume the TCP/IP stack consumes a good portion of the CPU resources). Similarly, I found a version of "King of the Mountain" that had the official video, and another version that just had a still of the "Aerial" album cover. There was a huge difference in the choppiness of the audio between the two, so clearly the video decoding load is also a big factor in the CPU resources required.

This post has been edited by jds: 07 June 2011 - 02:37 AM

[larryb123456]

@ skylights, Post # 187 dated April 18, 2011

Hello, skylights:

I don't know if your Post is still relevant or not, since so much time has gone by since it was written, but I noticed that, as of yet, no one has answered your question: "How do I use p3cpu.vxd? (Sorry, total noob.) Thanks."

If you no longer have a need for an answer, perhaps someone else will. Therefore, I'll try to provide an answer.

I have a great deal of experience in using p3cpu.vxd (by itself on my P2) and "noobian" is basically the language I speak compared to others on this site. I'll describe the way I use the .vxd (also referred to as the "Patcher"). These steps are based on RLoew's instructions to me, and I incorporated a great pointer from dencorso. I'll just list the steps and the way I "operate" the Patcher -- a way that, for me, is very quick and "foolproof".

1) Copy p3cpu.vxd to the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM Folder.
2) Backup C:\WINDOWS\System.ini.
3) System.ini is a text file. Right-click on System.ini (which is still in the C:\WINDOWS Folder), open it, find the [386Enh] Header inside, and copy and paste the following 7 lines of text into System.ini right under that Header:
;XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
;XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
;XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
;Device=P3CPU.VXD
;XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
;XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
;XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
4) Reboot.

These 4 steps complete the "initial setup". At this point, the Patcher is turned off -- as I'll later explain -- so it's safe to install a new Flash Player or open an application like Photoshop. (RLoew mentioned to me that the Patcher should not be turned on during any activities such as these.)

The Patcher is "operated" by the "state" (i.e., presence or absence) of the semi-colon in front of "Device" in System.ini as shown in Step 3). If the semi-colon is present and the computer rebooted, the Patcher will be turned off (as in the "initial setup" case shown above). If the semi-colon is later removed and the computer rebooted, the Patcher will be turned on. If the semi-colon is later added and the computer rebooted, the Patcher will be turned back off. Etc., etc., etc. In effect, the semi-colon is kind of a "toggle-switch" to turn the Patcher on and off.

Dencorso's "invaluable" tip to me was that a semi-colon in front of any line of text in System.ini will cause that line of text to be interpreted as a "comment" (of benefit only to the code writer, or another reader), and it therefore will not be acted on by the computer. I put the three lines of Xs above and below the "Device" line to make it "pop out" (i.e., making it easy to quickly find) in System.ini when I'm turning the Patcher on or off -- and to separate the "Device" line from the other lines of text in System.ini so that I wouldn't mistakenly mess them up when turning the Patcher on or off.

If you look in the C:\WINDOWS Folder, you'll notice that System.ini is in the midst of many, many other files. For me, it would be easy to mess something up if I accessed System.ini in this Folder every time I wanted to turn the Patcher on or off. Therefore, I access System.ini through Start-->Find-->Files or Folders. In the "Find: All Files" dialog box that pops up, I type in System.ini on the "Named: line" and choose (C:) on the "Look in:" line. System.ini will be found in 3 Folders, as will be shown in the "Find:Files named system.ini" dialog box that will pop up: C:\WINDOWS, C:\BACKUP, and the Folder that you chose to put the backup copy into in Step 2) above. Of course, we're interested in System.ini in the C:\WINDOWS Folder. Right-click on this System.ini, open it, and either remove or add the semi-colon in the "Device" line if you want the Patcher to be turned on or off, respectively, after reboot.

I haven't been on this site for quite a while, I have a great deal of catching up to do, and I sure hope this Post is not misguided, irrelevant, or a waste of space. I was just addressing skylights' question "noob" to "noob". I hope this Post might encourage other "noobs" to try RLoew's p3cpu.vxd. There is nothing wrong with being a noob. Remember, noob spelled backwards is "boon", defined as "something to be thankful for; blessing; benefit". Can't beat that, can you !

larryb123456

This post has been edited by larryb123456: 26 June 2011 - 10:51 AM

[CharlesF]

jumper, on 04 June 2011 - 10:26 PM, said:

FineSSE27a
Latest version will be posted here.
New Features: ...

jumper,

I run an Intel P III (Katmai) with MMX and SSE supported (but not SSE 2, SSE 3, ...).

Does FineSSE will still be able to handle some specific Illegal Instructions,
or is it useless in such case?

BTW, when we use it with Win.ini, do we still have to add "-v" at the end of the 'Debugger' line?

Thx in advance.
Charles.

[jumper]

Hello Charles,

>I run an Intel P III (Katmai) with MMX and SSE supported (but not SSE 2, SSE 3, ...).
>Does FineSSE will still be able to handle some specific Illegal Instructions, or is it useless in such case?

FineSSE does not currently handle any instructions that would cause an error on a PIII. If you encounter an Illegal Instruction error, please send me the details and I'll see if I can add the support.

>BTW, when we use it with Win.ini, do we still have to add "-v" at the end of the 'Debugger' line?

No. FineSSE without "-v" will run silently in the background. With it, FineSSE will display an output window and fill it with a list of the patches it makes.

-jumper

[CharlesF]

Thanks a lot. It is crystal clear!
Charles.

This post has been edited by CharlesF: 30 June 2011 - 11:49 AM