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Yes, it's a 1.5 GHz model. 1.4 wasd a typo

If you are nailing down a network driver issue, why putting a resource hungry application (a web browser) in between? It can't help but create confusion. I'd do tests with the lightest, GUI-less network applications available, such as downloding with "wget", maybe FTP...

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Sound like the behaviour I repeatedly obverved when ejecting a C/DVD. Often the system stalls for a moment then, too.
I think is is some prob on the pci bus/southbridge or so that halts the system. When ide can stall the system network can, too (both are on the pci bus)

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I know but i talking about one ambient screen without anymore screens, comparing with amiga os3.1 on a1200 i can open many screens without run out of chip memory, is like the manegement of windows was worst on mos (i know that 640x512 8 or 16 color are more ligh than 1280x1024 16k colours but a1200 just have 2mb of gfx memory).

This is not a blame for morphos, blame is not usefull for nothing, just i dont understand somethings sometimes.

=)

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It is pretty simple math, as far as I can understand :) There's certain amount of memory and certain things will consume it and nowadays resolutions will take considerably more than some old Amiga resolutions. If 640x512 mode in 16 colors needs about 160k of memory, it will fit quite many times in 2MB chip. While 1280x1024x32bit (5MB) doesn't that many times in 32MB.

And that calculation is for traditional 2D layers. If you use 3D layers (enhanced mode) in MorphOS, it will use memory considerably more. And if you use multiple screen buffers (DisplayEngine settings), memory is used even more :) These new additions are made in expense of graphics memory usage and aren't really suitable for all systems. Good thing is they're configurable :)

And actually "the management" is done better in MorphOS. If you run out of memory on Amiga's native modes, you just can't open more screens or allocate it more. Same situation on MorphOS (or RTG on real Amiga) and you still can open new screens, because data is swapped via ram when there isn't enough vmem free. And that swapping causes the short freezes and other effects in operation.

After some days of intensive testing trying to find a cure of this ethernet problem on the Mac mini I have discovered this.
And please take this numbers seriously, I also find it very strange that a music player can kill your network speed.

My mini can boot in two different states:
1. Nine times of ten reboots I get slow speed with Samba and FTP, in this case the test results (1) is valid. If I play some video's with MPlayer or use Ambients internal musik player to listen at my mp3's the recieve speed will be terribly slow.

2. One time of ten reboots or so I will notice full recieve speed with Samba and FTP, in this case the test results (2) is valid. Only if you play some mp3's with Ambient's internal music player you will notice a very slow samba and ftp connection when you recieve some files.

When MPlayer is playing a movie in these tests, the total CPU usage is about 15% so no heavy things.
The communication with samba and ftp protocol is between a PegasosII and a Mac mini on my local network, both are of course idle and registered with MorphOS 2.4.
Filesystem SFS is used, some tests with a FAT partition didn't give any interesting results.
--------------------


Test result's 1, (slow transfers 9 of 10 reboots).

285MB ftp recieve with ATC to ram: Average transfer rate = 4.6MByte/s
285MB ftp recieve with ATC to ram: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 0.58MByte/s
285MB ftp recieve with ATC to ram: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 0.77MByte/s

285MB ftp recieve with ATC to disk: Average transfer rate = 0.6MByte/s
285MB ftp recieve with ATC to disk: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 0.43MByte/s
285MB ftp recieve with ATC to disk: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 0.57MByte/s

285MB ftp send with ATC from ram: Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s
285MB ftp send with ATC from ram: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s
285MB ftp send with ATC from ram: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s

285MB ftp send with ATC from disk: Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s
285MB ftp send with ATC from disk: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 7.5MByte/s
285MB ftp send with ATC from disk: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s

FTP shows clearly that when you recieve to ram: or send there is a great speed boost, but if you play a mp3 or video at the same time, the recieve speed will be terrible slow, I wouldn't say anything if this was on a pc or mac, but I am not used to this (not multitasking) behaviour on MorphOS, lucky for me it's just a bug:)


285MB samba recieve to ram: Average transfer rate = 1.9MByte/s
285MB samba recieve to ram: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 0.47MByte/s
285MB samba recieve to ram: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 0.55MByte/s

285MB samba recieve to disk: Average transfer rate = 1.7MByte/s
285MB samba recieve to disk: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 0.41MByte/s
285MB samba recieve to disk: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 0.6MByte/s

285MB samba send from ram: Average transfer rate = 3.2MByte/s
285MB samba send from ram: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 3.1MByte/s
285MB samba send from ram: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 3.2MByte/s

285MB samba send from disk: Average transfer rate = 4.4MByte/s
285MB samba send from disk: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 4.3MByte/s
285MB samba send from disk: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 4.4MByte/s

Samba's recieve is very slow when you watch video or play some music at the same time.
-------------------




Test result's 2, (This is when we finally get some speed, 1 of 10 reboots).

285MB ftp recieve with ATC to ram: Average transfer rate = 8.4MByte/s
285MB ftp recieve with ATC to ram: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 4.5MByte/s
285MB ftp recieve with ATC to ram: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 1MByte/s

285MB ftp recieve with ATC to disk: Average transfer rate = 0.63MByte/s
285MB ftp recieve with ATC to disk: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 0.5MByte/s
285MB ftp recieve with ATC to disk: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 0.65MByte/s

285MB ftp send with ATC from ram: Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s
285MB ftp send with ATC from ram: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s
285MB ftp send with ATC from ram: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s

285MB ftp send with ATC from disk: Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s
285MB ftp send with ATC from disk: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 6.9MByte/s
285MB ftp send with ATC from disk: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 7.5MByte/s

FTP shows some very strange numbers when I recieve to disk, or recieve to ram: and playing a mp3 with Ambients internal music player.

285MB samba recieve to ram: Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s
285MB samba recieve to ram: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 8MByte/s
285MB samba recieve to ram: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 1MByte/s

285MB samba recieve to disk: Average transfer rate = 6.5MByte/s
285MB samba recieve to disk: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 6.7MByte/s
285MB samba recieve to disk: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 1MByte/s

285MB samba send from ram: Average transfer rate = 3.6MByte/s
285MB samba send from ram: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 3.1MByte/s
285MB samba send from ram: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 3.7MByte/s

285MB samba send from disk: Average transfer rate = 5MByte/s
285MB samba send from disk: and MPlayer playing a movie, Average transfer rate = 5MByte/s
285MB samba send from disk: and Ambient internal player playing a mp3, Average transfer rate = 5MByte/s

Samba shows similar results as FTP, but one interesting thing is that sending from ram: is slower than sending from disk. I have of course run all this tests alot.


During all tests I had done, I had some total system freeze when sending data, but I can't for sure say that I don't had any system freeze during recieve.
Some of the Samba tests are verified on another Mac mini with similar results.
If you try to verify this, please reboot an test more than once to verify your tests.


I believe and hope this numbers will be a great help for developers to reproduce slow connections.

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Nice post, I know the mathematics but i forget the amount or ram busy with enhanced display or 3d stuffs, but still 32mb gfx ram can be enough for run a browser and some things without more screens, if mac mini becomes slow just with owb open you cant be out of gfx memory.

OWB uses a vmem bitmap for the active tab. So add that to the screen(s) vmem consumption.

dake, that's an awesome job of testing! Those kind of tasks require a lot of patience and involvement. I hope it's useful to research this mysterious problem.

@jcmarcos, Thanks. I have holiday now so I had alot of time to do this, I believe I spent 45hours in this.
There where many hard parts because at the begining I had no clue, and there was this strange speed boost at random reboots, strange numbers if recieving to ram: or disk and suddenly more strange when playing some music:) and of course this wonderful system freeze's.
Fab helped me to get full recieve speed again by lowering the priority of "Ambient Thread x [36]" (this is the thread started when playing a mp3 with Ambients internal player), I changed it from 10 to -1 and get full speed at network again:)
What I forgot to mention earlier is that I get alot of this network drops to 0byte/s and thats the reason to my slow average network speed, so the slow speed isn't constant, it varied alot.

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Yes you can. For example 1600x1200x32bit enhanced mode with fullscreen OWB window on Ambient screen takes more than 32M even with single buffering. It depends of screen resolution, OWB window size and enhanced mode settings. 32M just isn't quite enough for all the goodies with today's standards when resolutions have got pretty big etc.

Yes present desktops are very hungry of graphics memory, maybe some day we see things like blazewcp, fblit... for use "fast" memory to help gfx memory but this maybe only occur on my fantasy.

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I get the same drops here with the LAN connection to other Pegasoses using my Envoy3 setup!
The drops vary, sometimes more, sometimes less...

Well i said 100kb/s, because i use the shared internet connection from my other computer, and that computer gets it via wifi. Connecting the mini directly to the router on the room upstairs, skyrocketed the tansfer rate :). But at hte moment, i only have wifi on my computer room.

The download speed of my G4 MacMini running MorphOS2.4 varies greatly, from a top speed of around 2mb/s to a low of less than 1kb/s, but not that wide a difference while on the same file download. I can get a wide difference from about 40kb/s to less than 1kb/s, or from 400kb/s to less than 200kb/s.

So I would have to agree that there must be a large number of dropped packets, or errors that are happening to drop the average download speed to around half of it's fastest average speed during the download of one file.

I hope that someone can figure out what the problem is, so it can be worked on and corrected. Since I haven't heard of this problem before MorphOS2.4 was released, I must assume that there are no ethernet connection speed problems with any of the Pegasos1 or 2 computers. Is that correct?

[ Edited by amigadave on 2010/3/6 21:40 ]

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Here between several Pegasos2 either with LAN connections between them, either internet connections seem to work without any problem. It seems that this is really specific to the MacMini's sungem_eth.device.

@amigadave

Actually, I experience very similar problems with OWB?1.7 on my Pegasos II with MorphOS2.4...

Download speed is far from being contant, it goes up and down and it can't sutain a constant speed, not to mention it can't also get the top speed from my -lame- 2 mbit connection... this is happening on my 2b5 pegasos II with morphOS2.4 connected to my DSL?modem via the rhine onboard NIC.. so, if the MorphOS team members are going to take a look at the macmini ethernet driver, I'd suggest them to look for similar issues on the Pegasos/Pegasos II?ethernet drivers...

regards,

Dragster



[ Edited by Dragster on 2010/3/19 1:27 ]

@Dragster

Since you also experience the same issue with other OSes on your Pegasos2, i'd still suggest to check the connectivity too. You could try linux too, if you're bored enough.

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I strongly suggest you run some ethernet cabling directly to your MacMini to solve your slow connection speed and be happy, or move the MacMini up to the room where your router is permanently.

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I was trying with some routers and you are decribing one of my best attemps, sometimes very fast and some other very slow.

@Fab

Thanks for the suggestion... actually yes... and no. Let me explain:

AmigaOS4 ethernet is driver is nowhere near perfect, but it's noticeable on local LAN?transfers.. 100 mbps connection only gets to 2.0 megabytes/sec.. so, I tweaked roadshow parameters as someone mentioned and I?was able to get it to 3.5 megabytes/sec... the internet access got better though, now I?get around 215 kbytes/sec from a good source.. like aminet.. or some torrents...I?used to get around 187 kbytes/sec max...

As for Linux, I have OpenSUSE 11.1 installed and running.. ethernet works pretty fast on local LAN and internet access (9.5 megabytes/sec for a local transfer via rhine nic connected at 100 mbps) and internet transfers 215 kbytes/sec sustained... so, this issue is no hardfware issue, definately...

On MorphOS2.4 (regged) a download with OWB?goes up and down all the time speedwise.. very similar issue to the one described by other users on this very same thread. So, I'd kindly ask the MorphOS developers to check for issues on the via_rhine ethernet driver at least.

regards,

Dragster

@dragster

The thing is we're not aware of other similar reports of slowness on Pegasos2/via rhine, so it's a bit hard to investigate if noone can reproduce it.

And about OWB, you don't say which values you actually get. But keep in mind the reported value in OWB is an "instant" value based on last couple seconds, so it could very well be normal. What speed do you get on average for a full download? Also, do other apps show similar slowness and unstable speed (say wget, ftp client, ...)? You can also open network.sbar to show receive/send speed.

For the record, i get about 9MB/s locally (smbfs, ftp), and 650kB/s from internet, on my pegasos2/via rhine/

To be noted OWB needs "setenv OWB_POLLTIME 1" to reach 9MB/s on LAN, though (else it would be something like 1.5MB/s by default).

[ Edited by Fab on 2010/3/20 16:00 ]

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well it seems then there is also a problem with the via_rhine.device though I did not notice such with several Pegasos2 in a LAN (using Envoy3) but only noticed it with and on MacMini's also in the LAN. Here the Pegasos2's seem to have stable transfers either LAN or internet which IS NOT the case at all with the MacMini's.

Sometimes I notice the following: on an Pegasos2 I open a drawer which is on a LAN partition where I downloaded software lha archives. In general I double click on the archive and then copy the files to where I need them. The very 1st time I do that (say I've downloaded 5 lha archives) the archive "opens" instantly, then I copy the files and with the "back" button I got back to the list, select the 2nd lha archive and here sometimes (quite often I must say) it takes several 10th of seconds before the archive opens. It doesn't matter if it'a a small or big archive then even very small ones, 200 to 500 kb, take a lot of time.

Similar seems to happen when e. g. copying from or to the Mac Mini via the LAN, sometimes it's fast, 3.5 mb/s, but sometimes it's very slow, only several kb/s..., hm...?

Sorry to drag up this old thread, but was this problem ever fixed?

I'm experiencing similar problems to the other posters on my Mini G4 1.5 64mbVRAM, opening pages in OWB can sometimes stall, a refresh will then work, connecting to IRC is the worst, it can sometimes take from 5 to 15 minutes to connect to Efnet, Geekshed or Amigaworld using Wookiechat, while it's connecting the rest of the system is very slow during those few minutes.

I've tried editing the config files as FAB suggests but no difference, using MorphOS 2.7, ethernet cable directly into netgear router with Sky 20 meg broadband.

[ Edited by danwood 30.04.2012 - 13:47 ]

I haven't seen any resolution to this announced. I think that none of the MorphOS Dev. Team members could reproduce the the problem and most or all of the users reporting it said that the problem was intermittent, so tracking the cause would be very difficult, if not impossible.

I know for me that I can't get the same speed over my ISP when running MorphOS2.7, as I can using the same G4 MacMini, same connection and using the same sites to test the speed of my connection, when running MacOSX, but my connection when using MorphOS2.7 is not what I would consider slow (usually). It is just not as fast as when I am running MacOSX and I can't figure out why.