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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!hammer.uoregon.edu!news.uoregon.edu!Symiserver2.symantec.com!news From: tedm@agora.rdrop.com Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Memory Checkers Date: 24 Oct 1996 03:25:41 GMT Organization: Symantec Corp. Lines: 38 Message-ID: <54mnjl$b3e@Symiserver2.symantec.com> References: <326D34A9.6F29@nortel.ca> Reply-To: tedm@agora.rdrop.com NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva1.central.com X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2.5 In <326D34A9.6F29@nortel.ca>, Bo Xiao <xiao@nortel.ca> writes: >May not be the best group but, hey, I am running FreeBSD. > >The problem is that my machine hangs *randomly* after 1 >hour or so, with no obvious reason. Last night, I spotted >a failure on power up memory checking which leads me to >believe there is a faulty chip in the box. Does any one >know any good memory checker on the net? > The best memory checkers I know are OS/2 Warp and FreeBSD. Both will crash mightly in the presense of bad memory, memory which will not be noticed after days of running the best commercial memory checkers on the market. OS/2 in particular is also wonderful at finding out about those weak cache memory designs too. >My other thought is that my power supply is running short, >since the symptom happens only after I put in a 2gig HD. Well, how do you know your 200W power supply is really going to handle 200W's? For about $80 you can buy a cheap ammeter, these are very useful for this kind of thing. They have this big "crab pincer" thing on the end of them that you snap around a wire to measure how much current is flowing through it. These are used all the time by electricians wiring houses and such. You take the device and snap the crab thing around all the wires coming from your power supply (while the computer is on and running of course) and this will give you a total amperage measurement which can be used to calculate the wattage that the computer is pulling through the power supply. Note that you do NOT snap the thing around the power cord going to the computer CPU as there is going to be lossage in the power supply that will make it seem like the computer is running hotter than it really is. You shouldn't run a computer power supply at any more than 80% of it's total rated wattage, unless you like replacing burned-up power supplies frequently.