Hmm, I think hdparm did the trick... turin:~# hdparm -t /dev/hdb
/dev/hdb: Timing buffered disk reads: 8 MB in 3.76 seconds = 2.13 MB/sec turin:~# hdparm -d1 /dev/hdb /dev/hdb: setting using_dma to 1 (on) using_dma = 1 (on) turin:~# hdparm -t /dev/hdb /dev/hdb: Timing buffered disk reads: 106 MB in 3.01 seconds = 35.22 MB/sec I thought of messing around with hdparm, never realized how easy it was. So far I haven't noticed any audio skipping when playing movies in kplayer or playing mp3s while running find and apt-cache search at the same time and didn't hear any skipping. Although I've heard that enabling DMA on VIA686B could cause data corruption and that's why it's disabled by default, I guess I'm willing to take the risk. A very big thank you to everyone that helped me. ===== - Paul Burkett __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]