[ILUG] mpg123 on debian woody

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

this seems very odd to me.  I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 400CDT which is
a 90MHz Pentium Classic.  I've got it up to the maximum 40MB RAM.

Previously I installed Debian Potato on it.  Although I compiled a 2.4
kernel for it I never really had chance to test it much and never tried
sound.  For the most part I stuck with the stock 2.2.16(?) stock potato
kernel.  I could successfully play mp3s (both over nfs and locally) with
mpg123 (both in X and text mode) and it only jumped when I did lots of
other stuff.

Anyway, recently I got a permanent pcmcia network card for it and decided I
would reinstall with debian woody.  This much I did with the stock 2.4
kernel.  Everything works great, except sound.  It's using the sb module.
However mpg123 cannot play mp3s without skipping constantly.  I can play
successfully in mono or with -2 ("Performs a downsampling of ratio 2:1").
However not normally.  I've stopped X, all pcmcia/network services etc etc
but to no avail.  I also downloaded a debian kernel and glibc optimized for
my specific cpu but this made no odds.

My question is does anything strike anyone as an obvious reason?  mpg123
should be no slower (I didn't compile it with optimization last time
either).  Is the 2.4 kernel notably slower?  According to 'top' mpg123 is
using 100% cpu (excepting what top itself is using).  It doesn't appear to
be swapping or having problems with slow disk access.
 
Any ideas how to proceed?  Should I just step back to 2.2.16 and/or potato?

Gavin