*BSD News Article 70692


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From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Split Bus problem
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 21:52:11 -0700
Organization: Erols Internet Services
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John Marra wrote:
> 
> I am running FreeBSD 2.1.0 - Release on a 486DX4-100 with 20MB of
> memory.  The machine was running great until I put both SCSI hard drives
> on an Adaptec PCI card.   Up until that time, all the expansion cards
> were ISA.  After this, the machine routinely crashes without a hint of
> the problem.  The network card is an ISA ne2000 clone.  Has anyone
> experienced this problem recently???  Thanks.

My first guess would be timing om the ISA bus. With a DX4-100, the 
motherboard is running at 33 MHz. If your ISA clock is CLK/4, it's running 
at 8.33 MHz, which exceeds the 8.00 MHz specification. I've had several 
generic NE2000 cards get lost running heavy communications on this basis. 
Depending on how your ROM BIOS Setup menu works, either slow the ISA clock 
down (CLK/5, 7.19 MHz, or available alternate), or else add a wait state on 
the ISA bus.

I actually encountered this problem first when setting up a DOOM2 
deathmatch over an IPX/SPX network, but the problem was the same and this 
was the solution.

Ken