NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/comp/unix/bsd/5357

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-08 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!news!brtmac
From: [e-mail] (Brett McCoy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: slow keyboard response under X
Date: 9 Sep 92 00:53:35
Organization: Kansas State University
Lines: 25
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: maverick.ksu.ksu.edu

I've been trying to figure out what the cause of this is and so far I
haven't been able to tell.  Under X there is a very noticable lag
between pressing a key and having the character appear in a xterm.
Holding down a key gets a delay, then a burst of characters, then
another delay, then a burst, then a delay, etc.  The delays are about
1 second long.  I have a 386sx-16 with 8M of RAM (it's not paging at
all), 124M IDE drive, 2 com ports, Sigma Legend 1M VGA.  There is no
delay when running in console mode or running Windows (I know, no
comparison, but it isn't a hardware problem).  Is it just that my CPU
can't handle the context switching fast enough, or is there something
else that might be wrong, or a patch that I should apply.  Is anyone
else running X on a 386sx of any speed, and if so, how responsive is
the keyboard?  BTW, I'm running a stripped down kernel with no ISOFS
or NFS support or support for the SCSI driver or any of the ethernet
drivers (340k, 280k stripped).  I don't know if this makes any
difference.  For the record, I have applied the com.c patches to fix
the select problem, so that isn't the problem.

Any help would be appreciated.  I can stand the machine being slow for
the most part, but the keyboard lag is really annoying.  If it is just
the fact of the CPU being too weak I'll probably upgrade to a 25 or 33
Mhz 386DX.  If it's something else I'd rather not have to upgrade right
now.

++Brett;