Windows Allegro on Multi-processor machines (was: Re: [AD] Allegro 4.2.0 RC1 timetable)

[Andrei Ellman <ae-a-alleg@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Elias Pschernig wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-06-05 at 15:15 +0200, Andrei Ellman wrote:
>
> > + Look into the issue of Allegro freezing for short periods of time on 
> > multi-processor machines running Windows 98.
>
> Any details on those two issues? E.g. link to allegro.cc threads.

Here is my original post on the subject in the archive for this 
mailing-list (November 2003):
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=3444104&forum_id=34598
Also, in August 2004, another discussion about multi-processor machines 
occured (although I'm not sure if this is related to the same problem or 
not):
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=5447880&forum_id=34598

Note that this affects WIP 4.1.11 and WIP 4.1.9, but not 4.0.3.
Alas, the machine that demonstrated these problems was destroyed by a 
power-surge, so I'd have to track down another machine with the same 
problem (but at least I was able to get SiSoft Sandra to produce a 
diagnostic-report on the machine which I still have). I've tried this on 
several machines and the game worked fine. It was just this one 
multi-processor machine running Windows 98 that caused intermittent freezes.

I did not have time to make a minimalist test-app, so the only way to 
track down the problem is as follows:

1. Download the game that demonstrated the problems from 
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ellman/ae-a/tmp/downloads/windows/chickenswin_a01.zip 
 (it was compiled with WIP 4.1.9, but WIP 4.1.11 is also affected). If 
you find that the mouse-pointer (and the rest of the game) 
intermittently freezes, it means that this problem affects your computer.
2. If you get these symptoms on your computer, let me know. I'll 
re-compile my game with the latest beta of Allegro.
3. If the problem still persists with the latest beta, then I'll try and 
isolate the problem with a series of simple test-apps until I've 
narrowed it down to the simplest means of demonstrating the problem.
4. If I get as far as this step, I'll report my findings to this 
mailing-list.


AE.