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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: Death of a computer? was Re: [BL] More fun with Xvesa and trident card
  • Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 14:12:56 +0000 (UTC)

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

sindi keesan wrote:

This computer does not appear to be very good for
linux but DOS works fine. Why?

Linux exercises the hardware more. It is quite common
to see DOS running happily on a system with a dud RAM
chip (What me worry?). But on the same system, Linux
crashes immediately.

This is not crashing immediately, but it is under certain circumstances.
linux unzip in BL2 and startx with an extra task in BL3.

I checked out the Fur Elise for DFI (Diamond Flower Industries(?) and Damage Free Intelligence) and it only had to do with the cpu or power
supply.

Since the problem is not occurring in DOS, it is probably not in the first 64MB if it is a memory problem (tho I rarely use that much RAM in DOS and ought to test it on rotating a large image file), so I booted both BL2 and BL3 with the switch mem=16m and both problems are fixed, therefore it is a memory problem. I have downloaded the DOS version of memtest and the linux source code for it and will attempt to compile for linux eventually.

If the first SIMM is bad in its second 3/4 the 16m test would still have let linux work properly so another option is to test the four SIMMs in pairs until I can recreate these completely reproducible errors.

Perhaps this is a bug affecting this model motherboard

Perhaps. There are fixes in the 2.2.16 kernel sourcecode
for certain motherboards. To see which motherboards, go
to a Slackware 7.1 site (or CDrom) and search the following
file for "motherboard"
---------------------------------
/docs/linux-2.2.16/Configure.help
---------------------------------
To see which of those fixes has been included in the
BL3 (or BL2) kernel, read the kernel config file at
the BasicLinux site. To see which fixes are in the
bare.i kernel, read the config file that accompanies
that kernel.

The 'Not a kernel image' problem appears to be motherboard specific but also intermittent. It occurs in both BL3 and BL2.

ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-7.1/docs 571K, still loading.
Available also in Polish.

I found nothing about DFI motherboards but there is something about buggy PCI motherboards and linux can try to detect the PCI hardware without using the BIOS. Also PCI quirks. Maybe I should try bare.i to boot with and if it works ten times in a row keep it?

But Hal has one computer with the same problem using various standard linuxes. Also it is intermittent. I will live with it for a while.

Does linux strain the hardware more than DOS?

Yes, Linux uses the available resources to the max.

Maybe the SIMMs are causing part of this problem

That's possible. I recommend a thorough RAM tester,
like MEMTEST (which can be downloaded free).

Got it even before I read your recommendation.

WOuld memory cause this sort of problem with unzipping
files?

Probably not bad RAM (which usually crashes Linux right
away). However unzipping a large file does put pressure
on your CPU and RAM (which might be triggering a hardware
issue). Is your RAM perhaps being shared with the video
card? Or is there anything else unusual about your RAM
(for example, I recall something about certain systems
having a "memory hole"). Perhaps there is a parameter
in your CMOS setup for turning off such features?

Four 64MB SIMMs which don't work in all motherboards but did in here.
This was a 2.9MB file, not all that large. Not shared. I had no problems with two 32 and two 8MB SIMMS. I have 3 of one model and one of another model 64MB SIMM and maybe they don't like each other?

I will look in CMOS for memory hole if memtest finds nothing.
This is fun. Things that work right are less educational.
(Including commercial linuxes).

Cheers,
Steven

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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org




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