*BSD News Article 2377


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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!usc!sdd.hp.com!swrinde!gatech!ukma!risner
From: risner@ms.uky.edu (James Risner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: 386 bsd 0.1 problem = too much ram OR bad mother board?
Message-ID: <1992Jul24.13919.4818@ms.uky.edu>
Date: 24 Jul 92 05:39:19 GMT
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences
Lines: 20

I have a 486, 2 IDE HDs, 1.44, CGA, 2 serial, and 32 meg ram.
My machine continually HANGS while accessing the HD.
My machine would not install correctly.  Ran perfectly until it got
to the "Installing files from installation floppy." and then all disk
access halts, and its locked = only ctrl-alt-del or reset works.

I took all the cards in the 486 and replaced them with a 386-25 & 8 meg ram
and managed to install the os on the HD the first time.  Now I can boot
386bsd on the 486 (after returning the cards) but often while accessing
the HD, I lock the machine up...Say you run something in the bg & and
go off to do other things... When disk activity stops so do you.
The whole system halts... BUT sometimes data buffered up for writes to disk
get written back out to disk a few seconds after the lock up.

Any clues from anyone on the best way to track down the problem?
I have recompiled the kernel with a printf for each wd.c function call
before I moved the controller to another machine and it worked fine.
Makes me think it is no longer the controller...

Risner