[MPlayer-users] Re: mplayer audio from TV line???

[Erik Slagter]

> What I have observed several times during the lockups is that the ATA 
> access light comes on solid, but it doesn't seem to be related to 
> legitimate disk access. I've was watching my Gnome CPU and memory plot 
> applets and there was nothing anomalous. There had been no significant 
> change in RAM or swap usage; there was free space in both.

It is very "easy" to enable the led on a ATA drive. Random i/o port
access easily triggers the "controller" led. That's because it is all
still compatible with MFM controllers legacy bork etc.

Maybe indeed a sound driver problem. Maybe try alsa or vv oss to be
sure?

Don't you have your printer port on irq 7? On most motherboards this is
hardwired and you cannot use it for anything else (no PCI cards anyway).