EMC2, System Management Interrupt Problem

[peetle]

Hi all,

I just finished my JGRO CNC router and I have been running it with EMC2 on Hardy Heron. I have latency issues which appear extremely similar to the ones described on the EMC2 wiki here (System Management Interrupt takes place every 64 seconds).

However, after doing the suggested fix on their website, I still have the same intermittent jump in latency.

I know that the smi fix is running because i can see it in visible when I list modules (lsmod). Is it possible that the fix is not working for some reason? As I was using hardy heron, I knew I didn't need to compile a new version of the module.

I'm quite the newbie to linux and CNC so any help would be very appreciated.

~Peter

[samco]

Great work.

Now - if you are still getting overruns.. I would look at other things. Do you have onboard-video? (video cards that share memory with system memory)

what is your system?

sam

[peetle]

Samco - thanks for responding.

The computer is not very fancy. It is a P4 1.8 Ghz or so desktop with a video card which I think is an older matrox. It is not an integrated graphics card.

[peetle]

I should also reiterate that the overrun takes place about every 64 seconds and seems to take the exact same form as an SMI issue.

Also, are there visual indications based on the output of the router that would signal a latency issue? I notice that all my work with the router seems to be successful and then suddenly a significant amount of steps are lost. The router then continues and this process repeats itself.

Would it be helpful for me to send some pictures of the output?

[thedoctor]

Don't look at the output to the drives for any indication of a problem. Stay with the latency issue as tested in terminal. The descriptions on fixing SMI latency problems are a little sketchy, as are other EMC documents. They don't tell you that certain chipsets are not supported. See if your chipset is even being detected by watching it boot REAL carefully. You might see a screen that says INTEL not detected or something similar. Also, other stuff runs at the 64 second interval. All power managment stuff should be turned off/disabled. I believe the video issue can be proven to not exist by running the latency-test without doing anything to provoke the video RAM. Just start the test and sit there. Hang in there. It took me three weeks and four computers to get a good clean system running with help from this forum and others. Almost forgot! Have you got 500meg of RAM? It really helps.

[samco]

also look in the bios. I solved one computers problem by turning off the power saving 'stuff' in the bios.

sam

[samco]

lspci -v will also give you your chipset info..

sam