[geeks] mp3 skippage

[Jonathan Katz]

Hi guys/gals!

I may have mentioned this to the list before... but, I gots me
a problem. Maybe you kids can help.

I have a AMD K6-3/400 w/ 128M of RAM. Win2k, ATI Rage 128 Pro,
12GB ATA66 disk, AD1816-based (soundblaster clone) PnP ISA
sound card, netgear 10/100 ethernet. A pretty solid machine.
Over the past year or so I've had the system it went from win98
to win2k (not an upgrade, reload w/ ntfs, etc.) Anywho, it 
was working fine (could play mp3s w/o problem.) Now when I
go to play mp3s they "skip" -- either they get decoded too
fast for a buffer on the sound card (sounds like it is being
remixed with a frame or two played out of order) or it skips
like when you drive too fast over rail-road tracks and the CD
player in the car skips. Needless to say this is really
annoying. It doesn't just do it on MP3s but all sounds (system
"ding" when you click the wrong thing, windows startup .WAV,
etc.)

Things we know it isn't:
o Disk I/O contention. My mp3s live on the RAID array. Playing
them 'over the wire' on my P3/450 laptop this doesn't occur.
o Other processes eating CPU. Ever after I kill everything that
  is 'non-essential' It still has this problem
o CPU can't handle the mp3. using 'task manager' the CPU usage
  never seems to go above 20%, even w/ Netscape open. It's
  usually <10%. However, when it does 'skip' the graph showing
  cpu usage is pegged, but the analog/number readout shows
  otherwise.
o Win2k. I loaded OpenBSD (2.8/latest) on another 10GB drive I
  own, and mpg123 has the same problem.

Theories:
o Buffer on the soundcard isn't working (overfull/underrun). I
  have no way of knowing this/testing this. Maybe get another
  soundcard?
o the FP on the AMD processor isn't the world's best, and is
  causing this headache
o ?????

Any ideas/inputs/suggestions are welcome. I've even elevated
the process priority of winamp (which I did upgrade to its
latest version) to 'real-time.' I also reniced the mpg123
priority to a full -20, to no avail.

-Jon