Sound-related hard-locking

["J. Solomon Kostelnik" <roz@one.net>]

I've been having a problem with DOSEMU causing my machine to hardlock
when using sound.  At first I thought it was only caused by using sound
in DOSEMU.  But last night the same thing happened when I was playing an
MP3 with XMMS and then booted XDOS (without midid running).

As soon as the XDOS window opened, my machine hard-locked.  No mouse, no
keyboard, music stopped, etc.  Hard reset needed.

Previously, this was happening with certain DOS games using MIDI music,
such as "The Sword of Shannara."  If I loaded midid, then opened XDOS,
then ran this game, when the MIDI music was supposed to start playing,
my machine would hard lock.  However, midid works just fine with another
DOS game, Ascendency, so I don't know what's different between the two.

Specs: Toshiba PII-400 Laptop, 192mb ram + 225mb swap, Mandrake Linux
8.2 w/ vanilla 2.4.18 kernel, Gnome 1.2.4 with sawfish, dosemu 1.1.3.7
with all the "experimental patches" applied.  Sound card is a ESS ES1978
Maestro 2E.

Is there a way I can log this before it crashes and get any meaningful
data before it happens?  If not, I've given you all the info I think is
relevant.  Let me know if you need more.

Solomon