[MPlayer-users] Athlon Crash :(

[emaillist+mpu at dogphilosophy.net]

On Monday 03 March 2003 04:07 pm, Baracus wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> Hi
> Similar problem was few posts ago but it wasnt solved
> I have Athlon 1.7+ and ECS K7S5A mainboard
>
> I ve got the following error:
> > Playing k.avi
> > AVI file format detected.
> >
> >
> > MPlayer interrupted by signal 4 in module: demux_open
> > - MPlayer crashed by an 'Illegal Instruction'.
> >   It usually happens when you run it on a CPU different than the one it
> > was compiled/optimized for.
> >   Verify this!
>
> I've tried many configs and nothing works
>
> PLEASE HELP -> SHOULD I MAIL FULL BUG REPORT ?????
>
> Some technical stuff:
> Athlon 1.7 XP
> ECS K7S5a
> STB Velocity 4400 (Riva TNT chip)
[...]

I ran into the same problem with my new Athlon XP 1800+...

Does your mainboard use an ALi chipset?  My SUSPICION is that
my mainboard is not properly initializing the CPU (is that even
a rational suspicion?) as even with my Athlon-Thunderbird 1200Mhz that
I previously had, I could never compile a working linux kernel set as
"athlon", though I found if I set it to "K6" it worked fine.  Now with
the new XP cpu that I replaced the Thunderbird with, I still get the
same problem compiling the kernel as "Athlon" (though I found if I set
it to "K6" and manually edit the Makefile to say "-march=athlon-tbird" instead 
of "K6" it still works fine), and anything I try to compile with
-march=athlon-xp throws out illegal instruction errors.

With MPlayer, it seems to be detecting that athlon as an "Athlon-4"
(What's the difference between "Athlon-4" and "Athlon-xp"?), and upon
compiling I get the same illegal instruction crash.  Manually forcing the
"-march=athlon-4" in the Makefiles to "-march=athlon-tbird" and recompiling
seems to disable whatever instruction isn't "legal" according to this XP chip
on this board (ALi chipset) and runs fine.  (I'm also using GCC 3.2.2).

I've given in and picked up a new mainboard (Via KT333 Chipset) which I
haven't yet had a chance to install.  I'll be interested to find out if
the mainboard turns out to be the problem...

FEATURE REQUEST - an option to "force" a CPU-type in the configure script...

Meanwhile, edit the Makefiles to say "athlon-tbird" where they say "athlon-4" 
(or "athlon-xp") and you should be able to get a working mplayer compiled - it
worked for me, anyway.