At 22:26 -0700 5/6/00, wirth at almaden.ibm.com wrote:
>Dave,
>
>Cycles can be stolen on the Mac by other than obvious applications.
>Extensions of various kinds (INITs, etc.) are often the culprit, leading to
>all kinds of strange timing problems, as can be readily discovered when
>trying to do some isochronous task such as writing CDs.
>
>I'd suggest trying two things:
>* Use one of the process sniffer extensions (sigh...) now available as
>shareware to report all running processes and their (approximate) time
>consumption.  This will only catch the grossest causes.
>* Use an extension manager (such as the standard one in Mac OS, or Conflict
>Catcher) to do a binary search for the culprit -- easy to do if you have a
>ready test to determine the presence or absence of your problem.  I use
>Conflict Catcher to reboot my Mac with a minimal set of extensions when I'm
>writing CDs.
>
>BTW, even Apple extensions can be a problem.  Some Macs and hardware
>configurations are notorious in this regard, e.g., the Express Modem, which
>steals cycles at a very low level to replace a few dollars worth of modem
>hardware!@#$!  I put a G3 accelerator card in my Performa 6400 at home, and
>couldn't get it to work right again until I pulled out the Express Modem
>and replaced it with a $39 external unit (doubling the transfer rate, too
>:-)  Seems to me that that solved some problems in sound generation, too...
>
>=====================================================
>Mike Wirth

I looked around but probably used the wrong keywords or site. Do you have the name of a good sniffer?

Dave
_______________________________
David N. Smith
IBM T J Watson Research Center
Hawthorne, NY
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