man8user

I suspect it is the Gigabyte BIOS. Here are some links: Gigabyte HPA issues: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4638.0 GA-EP45-UD3R BIOS: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9433.0 The Pg-51 of the printed mobo booklet shows "Dual BIOS Recovery Source" that defaults to HPA. However, the BIOS would not even provide me that option on next bootup. I went to Gigabyte site to check out what other BIOS revs they made since Dec 2008. I have rev F4. Since then they made 8 more revs ending at F12 dated Jan 2010 and none of these have anything to do with HPA -- at least from their gist of the revs. I guess I have to digest the indignity of letting an external piece of software gaining control of the PC and not letting me have that control back when I want it. Sounds like windoze to me! Next time when I upgrade any of the PCs at home I would select a mobo vendor more carefully. Thanks to tux99 and scarecrow for their input.

Merry X-mas. Had some time today to arrange my PC a bit and I discovered that somehow all 4 of my SATA hard drives got "infected" with HPA. Looking for the source of it, I traced back their purchase from NewEgg about 12-18 months back. Two of them had been exposed to WinXP earlier and so I do not know. But the other 2 had never had any contact with Windoze and they were under Mandriva 2010.0. Installing Mandriva would not put an HPA I believe. Or, would it? I emptied 2 500 GB Seagate ST3500320AS for preparation for MDADM. One had a junk Windoze partition with HPA and I nuked it. The other had an XFS file system with all the usable area and nothing else. That's when I discovered the HPA nightmare. These drives are /dev/sda and /dev/sdb in my setup. On bootup, the "dmesg" is showing HPA as 976,771,055 / 976,773,168 for both of them. The "hdparm -N" is also showing the same information. So, I issued "hdparm -N p976773168 /dev/sda" and then for /dev/sdb and both reported successful for permanent HPA removal. That did not last very long because the very next reboot with power cycle reverted them back to their original HPA 976,771,055 / 976,773,168! Perplexed, I went into Mandriva Control Center and then to "Change Disk Partition" section. These two 500GB disks are showing as 465 GB disks which is correct assuming the HPA is still intact (976,771,055 * 512 is 500.106,780,160 and then dividing by 1024*1024*1024 gets the 465GB number). So, I would appreciate any input on who is reverting back the HPA and with the same HPA size on both disks every time! Thank you. My mobo: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R with Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 at 4Ghz. This is 2 years old. There is no other BIOS related software running. [moved from Software by spinynorman]

Sorry for late response. I frankly do not understand quite well the layering you described. In my PC if I try to find packages I get something like this: [rcomix@localhost ~]$ man cdrecord [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep cdrkit cdrkit-isotools-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1 cdrkit-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1 cdrkit-icedax-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1 cdrkit-genisoimage-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1 [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep cdrecord [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep cdrtools [rcomix@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep cdtools Since "cdrkit" is a name that shows up at package level, I can remove the RPMs with that name. Is that what you suggest? If I do that, it looks it would also remove the "wodim" program by Joerg Schilling! By the way, the wodim and cdrecord are the same program... [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ which cdrecord /usr/bin/cdrecord [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ which wodim /usr/bin/wodim [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ ls -alt /usr/bin/cdrecord lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 2009-06-13 15:41 /usr/bin/cdrecord -> /etc/alternatives/cdrecord* [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ ls -alt /etc/alternatives/cdrecord lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2009-06-13 15:41 /etc/alternatives/cdrecord -> /usr/bin/wodim* [rcomix@localhost ~]$ On a second thought, I think you meant getting down to command line operations to burn CD/DVD. If wodim is the little wonder that does it all, then all the programs like Brasero, K3B, GnomeBaker, etc. are just providing a GUI and converting user requests into wodim commands. Wish I could keep Gnome and use K3B at the same time. K3B always worked for me in the past from Suse and RedHat days. On Windoze I prefer the InfraRecorder to anything else. So, how about getting into WINE environment to burn Cd/DVD and then back to Linux for all other stuff? I mean, how much is the learning curve for WINE? Never needed that before. My PC is a superfast beast now. So, WINE overheads are ignorable. Regards.

The Brasero version I have is 2.26.1. There is a CD and a DVD writer in my PC. Tried burning an Audio CD in DVD Writer and it starts moving the slider in the small window that appears after I hit "Burn". However even after 5 minutes that window does not change and there is no LED activity on the DVD writer. Same result with CD writer. It did burn a Data CD just fine. I tried both ways: inserting a blank CD-R and auto-starting Brasero by that chain of events and also by manually starting Brasero and then ignoring the "Blank CD Notification". Brasero does show the two writable devices for CD when I hit burn. In the interim, came across "GnomeBaker CD/DVD Writer 0.6.4" that is a bit unstable but works. You just have to forget adding multiple files at a time. Add one at a time by drag and drop and it works. Add in any other way or with your selection having multiple files, it invariably locks up or crashes. It's file ordering option works pretty good too. Thanks.

Thanks for the details. I would rather wait for 2.6.31 kernel to do the tape transfer project instead of jeopardizing what I already have! Kudos to scarecrow for finding the root problem and the solution.

I do not have codec#0. It is codec#2 for me. Here is the info.. [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ l /proc/asound/card0 total 0 dr-xr-xr-x 7 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 ./ dr-xr-xr-x 6 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 ../ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 codec#2 -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 id -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 oss_mixer dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm0c/ dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm0p/ dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm1c/ dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm1p/ dr-xr-xr-x 4 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm2c/ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ head /proc/asound/card0/codec#2 Codec: Realtek ALC889A Address: 2 Vendor Id: 0x10ec0885 Subsystem Id: 0x1458a102 Revision Id: 0x100101 No Modem Function Group found Default PCM: rates [0x560]: 44100 48000 96000 192000 bits [0xe]: 16 20 24 formats [0x1]: PCM [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ l /proc/asound total 0 dr-xr-xr-x 6 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 ./ dr-xr-xr-x 7 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 card0/ dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 card1/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 cards -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 devices lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 2009-06-10 17:06 HDMI -> card1/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 hwdep lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 2009-06-10 17:06 Intel -> card0/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 modules dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 oss/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 pcm dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 seq/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 timers -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 version dr-xr-xr-x 154 root root 0 2009-06-10 10:50 ../ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/asound/cards 0 [intel ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDA Intel at 0xed200000 irq 22 1 [HDMI ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI HDA ATI HDMI at 0xec010000 irq 17 [rcomix@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/asound/modules 0 snd_hda_intel 1 snd_hda_intel [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/asound/version Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.18a. [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ Looks like the patch you pointed to will correctly identify the ALC889A and emit KERN_INFO that I can check. Shall wait for your confirmation however. :)

Well, the sound experts suspect that Mandriva sound drivers may not completely support the Realtek ALC889A soundchip. (Ref Bug# 51440). The motherboard is a relatively new one: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R. And the sad part is that the Line-in works in the same setup with Gigabyte drivers in windoze xp sp2. Thanks.

Thanks scarecrow. I tried your suggestion but MCC's SoundDrake doesn't offer me to use any driver other than snd_hda_intel. The OSS v.4 was not even in my list of applicable drivers (from Advanced menu). After going to Pacho Ramos's page I tried looking for alternate CODEC. Mine is Realtek ALC889A by default and this is not there in the list of alternate CODECs that he linked to. I next verified that the PCI DevId of my sound dev (0x3A3E) is in the list of supported devs in snd_hda_intel source code. What surprised me is that there are at least two versions of this soundcard on ICH10: 3A3E and 3A6E. The 3A6E I guess is Intel's unmodified stuff but the 3A3E is Gigabyte special! Its sub-vendorId is hardcoded to Gigabyte. I may be wrong but it is possible that the behavior between the two can be subtly different. Hopefully the snd_hda_intel can take care of all these. In the end, I submitted a bug report following Mr. Ramos' format. Regards.

Hello, I cannot seem to get past the hurdle of recording via line-in for old cassettes. The 1990's 2-in-1 has headphone out and I connected that to Line-in of the motherboard's Intel HDA port. The Line-out is normal PC speaker which I can hear without problem. When I attempt to record, I can hear what is playing on 2-in-1 via those PC speakers. But nothing gets recorded -- not even a blip. I tried to create some line noise by plugging in and out the audio jack several times while recording but still nothing! There are 2 sound cards in my PC. One is from Gigabyte motherboard and the other from ATI Radeon 34xx PCI Express VGA add-on card. I forced the ATI card with "Unknown" driver during install from my prior experience with 2009.0. So, that ATI card should be doing VGA only, nothing else. Started with Audacity and when it failed I tried with Ardour too without success. Down to comannd line with arecord, aplay, alsamixer, amixer, pavucontrol, etc. but still no success. By the way, the Microphone Input works fine and I can record with Audacity. Since I can hear on PC speakers what I want to record, it looks to me a configuration or software issue. Could someone help? Here are some existing config info: MCC--> Sound Config Screen ========================== There's is no known OSS/ALSA alternative driver for your sound card (ATI RV620 [ Radeon HD 34xx series]) which currently uses "unknown". Enable PulseAudio: Box checked Automatic routing from ALSA to PulseAudio: Box checked Enable 5.1 sound with PulseAudio: Box unchecked Enable user switching for audio apps: Box checked Use Glitch-free mode: Box checked. pavucontrol =========== Configuration: HDA ATI HDMI: Profile = Off HDA Intel: Profile = Output Analog Stereo + Input Analog Stereo. Input Devices: HDA Intel: Front Left = 100%. Front Right = 100%. The LED Bar is dancing. Monitor of HDA Intel: Use as fallback. Front Left = Front Right = 100%. The LED Bar is sielnt. amixer -c 0 =========== Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [off] amixer -c 1 =========== Simple mixer control 'Master',0 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0 Capabilities: pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Mono: Front Left: Playback [on] Front Right: Playback [on] Simple mixer control 'PCM',0 Capabilities: pvolume Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 255 Mono: Front Left: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB] Front Right: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB] Simple mixer control 'Front',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Front Left: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Front Mic',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [off] Front Right: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [off] Simple mixer control 'Front Mic Boost',0 Capabilities: volume Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: 0 - 3 Front Left: 2 [67%] Front Right: 2 [67%] Simple mixer control 'Surround',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Front Left: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Center',0 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'LFE',0 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Side',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Front Left: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Line',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 30 [97%] [10.50dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 30 [97%] [10.50dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'CD',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Mic',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [off] Front Right: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [off] Simple mixer control 'Mic Boost',0 Capabilities: volume Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: 0 - 3 Front Left: 2 [67%] Front Right: 2 [67%] Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined cswitch cswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Capture channels: Mono Mono: Playback [on] Capture [on] Simple mixer control 'IEC958 Default PCM',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [on] Simple mixer control 'PC Speaker',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 6 [19%] [-25.50dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 6 [19%] [-25.50dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Capture',0 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 46 Front Left: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [on] Front Right: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Capture',1 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 46 Front Left: Capture 44 [96%] [28.00dB] [on] Front Right: Capture 44 [96%] [28.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Capture',2 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 46 Front Left: Capture 44 [96%] [28.00dB] [on] Front Right: Capture 44 [96%] [28.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Channel Mode',0 Capabilities: enum Items: '6ch' '8ch' Item0: '6ch' Simple mixer control 'Digital',0 Capabilities: cvolume Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 120 Front Left: Capture 60 [50%] [0.00dB] Front Right: Capture 60 [50%] [0.00dB] Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0 Capabilities: cenum Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line' 'CD' Item0: 'Mic' Simple mixer control 'Input Source',1 Capabilities: cenum Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line' 'CD' Item0: 'Mic' Simple mixer control 'Input Source',2 Capabilities: cenum Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line' 'CD' Item0: 'Mic' /sbin/lsmod | grep snd =================== snd_hda_codec_atihdmi 4128 1 snd_hda_codec_realtek 260900 1 snd_seq_dummy 3236 0 snd_seq_oss 33696 0 snd_hda_intel 29480 2 snd_seq_midi_event 8352 1 snd_seq_oss snd_seq 58240 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq_device 8020 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq snd_hda_codec 78272 3 snd_hda_codec_atihdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel snd_pcm_oss 43520 0 snd_hwdep 8712 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm 90216 3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm_oss snd_timer 25008 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm snd_mixer_oss 16800 1 snd_pcm_oss snd 72520 15 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_seq_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_c odec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss soundcore 8608 1 snd snd_page_alloc 10544 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm Thanks. [moved from Software by spinynorman]

Thanks for the pointer, I checked out his website and I discovered I had already downloaded his collection of RPMs. But, they are built for 32-bit. Since I am using only 64-bit nowadays, I went back looking for 64-bit gtklib 2.0. Sure I found it. But installing it implied throwing away almost half of the older 64-bit runtime libraries. I went on anyway but soon the installation failed. Lucky that the failed installation did not leave the urpmi database in a disarray (good job by Mandriva developers). Basically, the PCB part of the gEDA suite is simply not ready yet for 64-bit Mandriva. Shall wait for one of the newer versions of 2009 later this year. My solution was to go back and install Fedora 10 (I selected 32-bit only) and download the gEDA and PCB. Yes, gEDA and PCB work flawlessly on Fedora 10. Thanks once again for the information.

Thanks for your quick response. If I understand correctly, you are saying I got the "pcb" program installed as a by-product of installing the geda-gschem package. But, when I type "pcb" from shell, I get 'Command not found'. That's what prompted me to look for PCB package in source format. I really did not want to install anything outside of urpmi domain. But, if that's the only way... well. This evening I shall look for the devel version of the libgtk+2.0_0 as you suggested and hopefully I shall find it. What is a little troubling to me is the fact that there are downloadable PCB RPMs for Fedora 10, Suse 11 and Mandrake ( as per http://rpm.pbone.net/) but none for Mandriva. The other distros have separated the geda-gschem and PCB into separate packages but not Mandriva. Is that a correct observation? Regards.

I was looking for using the PCB layout tool but only came as far as using gEDA toolset. Initially I thought the gEDA had installed the pcb too. But, then I realized I could go only as far as gsch2pcb. The gEDA package is lacking pcb. Here is a list of my gEDA related packages :- [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ rpmlist | grep geda geda-symbols-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-20060123-4mdv2009.0 geda-gschem-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-docs-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-gnetlist-20080127-1mdv2009.0 lib64geda33-20080127-3mdv2009.0 geda-utils-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-gattrib-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-gsymcheck-20080127-1mdv2009.0 libgeda-data-20080127-3mdv2009.0 geda-examples-20080127-1mdv2009.0 [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ So, I go to "Install Remove S/W" and look for pcb package with internet connected but none showed up (or, that had anything to do with PCB layout). Next, I download the PCB source thinking I could compile and use it but it is looking for gtk+2.4 or more... checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config checking for GTK... no configure: error: Cannot find gtk+ >= 2.4.0, install it and rerun ./configure Please review the following errors: No package 'gtk+-2.0' found [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ So, I look for my gtk related packages and here they are: [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ rpmlist | grep gtk lib64gtkimageview0-1.6.1-2mdv2009.0 lib64wxgtku2.8-2.8.8-1mdv2009.0 gtkspell-2.0.14-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtk+-x11-2.0_0-2.14.3-2mdv2009.0 lib64webkitgtk1-1.0.2-0.36309.1mdv2009.0 gtksourceview-2.4.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtk-linux-fb-2.0_0-2.4.14-9mdv2009.0 wxgtk2.8-2.8.8-1mdv2009.0 python-gtksourceview-2.4.0-1mdv2009.0 gtk-sharp2-2.12.4-1mdv2009.0 gtksourceview1-1.8.5-5mdv2009.0 gtkhtml-3.14-3.24.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtk+2.0_0-2.14.3-2mdv2009.0 lib64canberra-gtk0-0.9-3mdv2009.0 lib64gtkspell0-2.0.14-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtksourceview-1.0_0-1.8.5-5mdv2009.0 libgtk+-x11-2.0_0-2.14.3-2mdv2009.0 lib64gtkmm2.4_1-2.14.1-1mdv2009.0 pygtk2.0-libglade-2.13.0-1mdv2009.0 gtk-engines2-2.16.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtkhtml-3.14_19-3.24.0-1mdv2009.0 canberra-gtk-0.9-3mdv2009.0 lib64gtksourceview-2.0_0-2.4.0-1mdv2009.0 xdg-user-dirs-gtk-0.8-2mdv2009.0 gnome-python-gtkmozembed-2.19.1-20mdv2009.0 pygtk2.0-2.13.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtk-engines2-2.16.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtkhtml2_0-2.11.1-3mdv2009.0 gtk+2.0-2.14.3-2mdv2009.0 [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ The "Install Remove S/W" is not able to find any more recent gtk than the ones I have. Is there a way out? Or, back to windoze for the pcb! :unsure: Thanks.

Ok... I get the picture. That is a nice trick by Yves! You probably break up the input to encoder in two parts first. Thanks to you all. I would probably shoot for Intel Q9550 to make me a little bit future-proof but the trend is clear. There needs to be more multi-threaded apps to extract benefits of quad cores and in future, of those 4,8,16 cores of i7.

Hello, I am not quite sure if this is the right forum for my question but... Having spent enough frustrating hours trying to do video processing with a a 32-bit Sempron, I want to upgrade to a much much faster cpu/motherboard combo. But before I take a leap into Phenoms/Denebs or Core 2 Duo E8600 or Core2 Q9550, it would be nice to know the level of multi-threading used by existing Linux video applications and utilities. It would serve little purpose to go for Core2 Extreme series if I can get by with a Core 2 Duo for example. I am not into games but not afraid to overclock if required to get the extra performance out of a system. I use Cinelerra (at novice level), need ffmpeg frequently, use QDVDAuthor or ManDVD. The Cinelerra rendering to raw video takes 2.3 hour for a 1.5 hour DVD. Rendering to MPEG needs about 4.5 hours. ffmpeg easily eats up 1.5 hour for the same footage. ManDvd or QDVDAuthor takes about 1hr before the DVD structure appears on the hard disk. One mistake at an earlier stage of the workflow and I am back at Cinelerra redoing the editing! This is way too much for my patience. So, any suggestions about what type of cpu/mobo combo would be effective for the typical software available at this time on Linux? Thanks.

This is an update. In the process of installing libstreamXXX for wma codecs I was told to add some non-Free repos and I did that. I was in root account. After that totem was able to play WMA files and I went back working in non-root account. During the process I also did a few ifup/down eth0 from root -- not that it was necessary, but just to check if I can control the eth0 well and at will. Then when I logged in the non-root account, that Bonobo activation server error message failed to appear and the Nautilus icons on desktop did not disappear anymore! Somehow, the problem went away.