[SWLUG] sound card interference from konqueror?

[Steve Hill]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2007, Edward Evans wrote:

> I can't help you much with this, except that a few years ago I had a 
> very similar problem but using the built-in sound on a Asus motherboard 
> - intermittent and unpredictable faint buzz.  But then I found some 
> sort of kernel setting/boot parameter which switched off (or possibly 
> on) something and the problem was cured.  The trouble is, I can't 
> remember what it was!  But at least in my case what sounded like 
> electrical interference was actually software "interference", so it 
> might be worth your while searching a bit further.

Back in ye olde days (around 1998 I'd guess), using the HLT instruction 
caused a lot of electrical noise on some motherboards, which made its way 
into the sound system.  The HLT instruction is used to save power while 
the machine is idle (although these days ACPI is used to get much better 
power savings) and Windows didn't use it at all, so it was frequently 
found that installing Linux on a machine that worked fine under Windows 
would result in nasty noises coming from the speakers under Linux.

However, I wouldn't expect that to be a problem these days, since 
Microsoft realised that burning as much power as possible was a Bad Idea 
and do similar power saving stuff to Linux now.  So the hardware 
manufacturers would have spotted the problem and fixed it long before the 
hardware hit the shelves.


  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence