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From: C503719@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU (Baird McIntosh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.audio
Subject: Re: MED 3.00 Problems
Message-ID: <910321.000737.CST.C503719@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU>
Date: 21 Mar 91 06:07:37 GMT
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Organization: The Synthy EuroTechnoWack Beat, Inc.
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In Message-ID: <91079.202357IMS103@psuvm.psu.edu>
          IMS103@psuvm.psu.edu (Ian Matthew Smith) said:
>I just downloaded MED 3.00 (I had been using 2.13 with no problems)
>and it is interfering with mu terminal program.  Running MED songs
>(especially ones with synth instruments) causes VLT 5.045 to loose
>characters at 2400 baud.  This did not happen with 2.13 before.
>Upping the priority of VLT does not seem to help.  My friend has
>observed the same problem on his Amiga also.  This is highly annoying,
>as file transfers are impossible with MED playing.  Other than that,
>MED 3.00 is an exelent program.  Any ideas?

I believe this is because MED 3.00 uses the CIAB timer instead of CIAA.
CIAA is for *system use only*, but some programs used it anyway in the
recent past (MED, Sonix, ...).  Anyway, CIAA has a higher priority than
the serial.device which, in turn, has a higher priority than CIAB.

I'm sure someone else will step in and give you a more technically correct
explanation, but basically the 'problem' is:

   In making bids for processor attention, the serial.device gets the
   first grabs over the CIAB.

This doesn't solve your problem, and I fairly butchered the explanation.
God, I feel awful.  :-)

| Baird McIntosh | c503719@umcvmb.missouri.edu <-or-> c503719@umcvmb.bitnet |
|        "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."             |
|        "Let's go!"              LEMMINGS             "Oh no!"             |