Ok, here's a follow up to what you were asking about fro my previous post.
I dropped the bus speed back down to 30 Mhz, so the chip is running at 233 now. Everything SEEMED to be running fine, but when I went downstairs to fetch some MP3's to put onto my "server" to run your test, when I came back upstairs to the WebSurfer it had locked up. I had put the cover back onto the machine between my previous post and the lockup. Nothing felt particularly warm ,but who knwos. I've pulled the cover back off and will run it this way for a couple hours, surfing while playing MP3's to see if it locks again.
So, basically, I'm thinking the problems could be caused by one of the following:
1) Thermal (the hard drive seems to get RATHER warm. I'm thinking of drilling some vent holes above it and the power supply to give them a little air.)
2) RF ?
3) electrical? (the hard drive is touching the case. I've heard that there is some current running through the casing. Thinking this might be causing an intermitent short?)
4) Drivers? (some have metioned problems with the audio drivers....)
5) some sort of IRQ conflict
6) The memory I put in? I don'tknow if what I put in is PC66 or 100 or if that would make any difference in this thing. When I clocked up the CPU I didn't change any of the RAM speed settings in the BIOS. Could be I'm pushing it too hard...
Anyhow, back to your questions: Ok, I have a Win98 desktop machine downstairs with a P2-333 acting as my server. Using Microsoft File sharing over TCPIP on my home 10 MB LAN (no other traffic on the LAN at the moment) I'm succesfully playing MP3 with NO skips, and writing this message. A couple things though:
1) I am using only the built in basic visualization on WinAmp (the little spectrum analyzer thing). I have the visualization priority setting set at slightly below normal (who cares about the visual? I want MUSIC!)
2) I set the MP3 decoder priority setting to 1 setting above "normal" so WinAmp is getting more CPU cycles than normal. Makes everything else a little sluggish. As long as you're willing to live with the tradeoff it's not bad.
3) I have WinAmp set to pull the data as needed, Not to pull the whole file before playing. If I was on a busy network I'd probably switch that to avoid collision issues.
Anyhow, I'll let you guys know how it works out, but I can categorically state that the built in CPU is QUITE capable of playing MP3's WITH USB ethernet pulling the files. Clocking up to 233 just makes the whole system a little nicer to work with.
BTW, I'm running stock Win98 (first edition). No patches, no upgrades, minimal install of stuff.
Hope this helps out some.
