grml on vmware workstation, problem with swspeak

[Kerry Hoath]

This is not easily solvable and is not grml's fault.
A pc runs its system timer at a specific rate. Depending on the guest or 
host operating system, this varies.
windows can run the timer at 1024hz but no faster.
Linux kernels want to run the system timer at 100, 200, 500 or 1000hz.

the host operating system sets the fastest timer rate; so let's assume 
windows at 1024hz.
Now boot Linux and Alsa drivers want the timer to also run at 1024hz. this 
isn't going to happen because Windows won't have enough timer ticks to 
service all the interrupts from both the virtual machine and actual machine. 
What vmware does is it gives the guest as many ticks as it can and fudges 
the time to make up for the lost ticks.

You can either reduce the timer frequency that the Linux kernel wants to use 
or turn off the highspeed timers.

vmware recommend the following boot options to a Linux kernel to reduce the 
impact on system performance. this upsets software speech and the alsa 
drivers on occation:
linux noapic nolapic acpi=off clock=pit

there is an article on vmware.com called vmware_timekeeping.pdf or similar 
that explains all this. Vmware needs a high resolution timer to keep the 
virtual machines in sync and not many old machines have an hpet.
There are also problems with vmware taking control of various timing sources 
and certain operating systems won't let go of the timing.

Hope this explains why you might have been having problems.

Regards, Kerry.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "jeremy" <l84ad8r at gmail.com>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 10:31 AM
Subject: grml on vmware workstation, problem with swspeak


> Hello list, I seem to remember this all ready beeing explained, but
> can't find it in the load of email I was going through to find it, so,
> here it goes again if it hasn't. I am trying to boot the live cd of
> either grml 1.0 or 1.1 and use the software speech so as to not have to
> connect a external synth. I never did have any luck with getting it
> going just from a burned cd and booting it on an old machine I had, so,
> vmware was going to be my next best option. But, when I get to the boot
> prompt, I type:
> grml swspeak
> and after about a minute or perhaps a bit less, still when the boot
> messages are scrolling up the screen, software speech starts, but, it
> sounds like it has a really bad hiss throughout everything spoken. Also
> it says some words and spells others. The hissing is with everything it
> says, but, you can still sort of understand it, but, certainly not well
> enough to use. I was just curious if this could be explained, and, if
> so, could be fixed so I could get it going. It would be nice to finally
> have linux going and not have to carry around my doubletalk just for
> that one thing. I know that telnet, ssh, and, even serial can be used,
> but beeing able to actually work on the machine would be a bit better I
> think, so, any help would be wonderful.
> Hope all is well.
>
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