However, I'm a little suspicious that there maybe some hardware reason you are getting such long delays.

Yeah, hardware trouble is a possibility, to be sure. But if so, then I'm not the only one with hardware trouble. Others have reported the exact same problem.

The 200/300ms numbers I'm getting... are those in a routine that involves the hard disks? Is it possible that hard disk errors could cause that sort of a problem? Or is the measurement of the time in that routine independent of other operations?

For the record, when I've had the pauses happen here on my desk, the unit was running "cool", i.e., it wasn't warm to the touch when I put my hand on it (except for the front display area which is always a little warm due to the heater filaments). So thermal failure of the hard disks is unlikely.

I've left a prototype Mark II unit running for around four hours this evening...

Yeah, the intermittent bugs are a bitch, aren't they? Have you guys experienced any skips at all with any of your players, or are you going totally on our reports?

Could you leave your unit (running beta12c is fine) connected to a serial port and if you get a skip see if anything is output please?

I'll do my best. Can't do it today, tomorrow I'll re-install the developer 12d-debug and leave it running with HyperTerminal connected. Then if I see a big number in the debug box, I'll look and see if the serial port reported anything.

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Tony Fabris