latency-test freezes computer after startup

Hi everybody. I'm a complete newbie here and I have a very basic question. Maybe somebody can give me a hint what I did do wrong or what document I missed to read in advance.

Summary: using the live CD and before having configured anything I try to execute a latency-test on a machine without onboard parport and machine "freezes" immediately - needs reboot.

In detail:

I got me a download of the live CD as of January 2010. I was able to run this on some old Pentium 3 machines but initially found that latency-test found very bad latency values. This fact -of course- did not change after I easily managed to install EMC2 from the live CD on one of these machines. So far nothing to really be scared about

Before starting to search for improvements on the old machines I booted the live CD on two different newer computers with "modern" AMD X2 Hardware but no onboard parallel port - just for sake of checking the latency-values. I do not have an Intel one for cross-check.

I observed that always the live-Ubuntu seemed to work fine but when I started the latency-test, no matter from the GUI-menu or from the command shell my machine "froze" i.e. I it did not react on keyboard and mouse actions any more and I had to power down to restart. The same problem occured when I started EMC2 from the menu and pushed ok after chosing some random sample config.

So I suspected EMC2 generally shows unpredictable (?) behaviour when no Parport was found. But when I plugged a PCI Parport into my AMD X2/MSI K9 digital Neo machine nothing changed.

I have hot seen any anomalities in any the ubuntu logfiles besides some sound related stuff.

The parport is seen as ppdev user-space parallel port driver in the syslog.

lspci -v says:

03:03.0 Communication controller: NetMos Technology PCI 1 port parallel adapter (rev 01)
Subsystem: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic Unknown device 0010
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 10
I/O ports at e800
I/O ports at e400
I/O ports at e000
I/O ports at d800
I/O ports at d400
I/O ports at d000


Any ideas? Suggestions welcome!

Best regards, Volker