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Date: Sun, 06 Jul 1997 07:32:07 -0600
From: dburr@POBoxes.com
Subject: sporadic problems with FreeBSD 2.2.2-box
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.hardware
Message-ID: <868191978.12011@dejanews.com>
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I am having weird problems with my new FreeBSD 2.2.2 machine.
First, a description of my system:
Mainboard (JET J-446B mainboard, with built-in EIDE/floppy/IO, PCI/ISA,
SiS 85c496 chipset)
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS
CPU: Intel i486DX2/66 oveclocked to DX2/80 (i.e. the bus is running at
40MHz)
Memory: 16 MB SIMM, 60ns, 72-pin, EDO
PCI video card: generic/clone, based
on Cirrus Logic CL-GD54xx chip
8-bit ISA CD-ROM: Sony CDU-531
16-bit ISA: Generic NE2000 clone ethernet card
Floppy: 1.44 MB (Teac)
Hard Drive: Maxtor 7245 AT (245 MB IDE)
The problem is this: The machine crashes at random. This usually happens
when doing some intensive tasks, or even lots of less-intensive tasks at
once. The crashes are usually non-fatal (i.e. they don't bring down the
whole system) -- shells or other programs coredump and exit, gcc complains
with weird error messages that mysteriously disappear when I re-run it,
etc. But at least once, the machine has completely crashed -- no panic
dump or anything, it just reboots.
This does not happen very often. Sometimes I can have the machine running
for hours, even days, before something happens. For example, my machine
has been compiling large programs and sorting through graphics images for
well over 10 hours now, very disk and processor intensive, and not a
single weird symptom. However, yesterday, I booted up the machine, logged
in, fired up PPP, and launched my IRC client. Immediate crash (this one
was bad: it rebooted the machine).
I've done some thinking and have narrowed the possible problem down to
several specific areas. Can anyone comment on these please?
* CPU and overclocking: This is probably the problem, no? This CPU
belongs to a friend of mine, who ran it overclocked to 80 using Win95
and Linux, with no problems (but he has a different motherboard
altogether). Maybe I should just bite the bullet and either live with
66MHz or get a DX4/133 or something.
* Memory: I discovered while roooting around in the system that my memory
was EDO. When looking at the motherboard manual, it does not mention
anything about EDO. I heard some very scary stories about using EDO
memory in a non-EDO motherboard, that it could cause hardware failure,
fry your memory chips, etc. Can anyone supply more information about
this for me? And could this really be causing my problem?
* PCI and PCI BIOS: This is my first PCI system. And I know next to
nothing about PCI. Nor do I know about any of the dozens of BIOS
settings (the motherboard manual did not shed any light on this). Could
a mis-configuration thereabouts be causing my problems? FYI, I did set
bus timings, wait states, etc. to "default" (auto-configure) settings.
So what is the likelihood that each of these that I listed are the
problems I'm having? Any problems you can think of that I didn't list?
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Please respond by
e-mail if at all possible. Thank you!
--
Donald Burr <dburr@POBoxes.com> - Ask me for my PGP key | PGP: Your
WWW HomePage: http://DonaldBurr.base.org/ ICQ #1347455 | right to
Address: P.O. Box 91212, Santa Barbara, CA 93190-1212 | 'Net privacy.
Phone: (805) 564-1871 FAX: (800) 492-5954 | USE IT.
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