RE: [amsat-bb] AGWPE

[Douglas Braun & Nadia Papakonstantinou <doug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The tragedy of the PC soundcard is that is has virtually no
buffer memory on-board.  If the CPU is even a little bit
late sending or grabbing data, you get a disruption in
the audio.  

You see this all the time when you are playing audio
and you get a dah-dah-dah-dah-dah skipping when starting up
another program, etc.

If the soundcard architecture included 512k or so of buffer memory
(which does not have to be at all high-performance), the soundcard
would be able to run for several seconds without CPU intervention
and we would not have these sort of problems.

Oh well...

Doug
NA1DB

At 06:44 PM 4/10/01 , you wrote:
>It may not work well on some systems.  I've found that under Windows NT, you
>need a lot of CPU grunt to get soundcard packet working.  If you have
>anything faster than a 300 under NT (under 9x, a P200 should be fine), then
>you have a good chance of working.  I have Tx lockups on an older version of
>AGWPE on a P233, later versions haven't really worked for me... :(
>
>It also depends on your soundcard drivers, and I think mine are a little
>flaky. :(  Might be time to invest in a real SB, given that I use my
>soundcard heavily for ham stuff. :)
>
>By comparison, on the Linux box, the kernel soundcard modem drivers perform
>flawlessly on a 486/66, on a system that's holding up an Internet link and
>doing a few other things at the same time. :)
>
>Give AGW a try, but don't expect miracles on slower hardware or cheap sound
>cards.  YMMV. :)

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