Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

On 25/03/07, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org <baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:
>
> > some AMD cpus (the k6 and k7 in particular) suffer from the "hlt bug"
> > when used with ceartain chipsets (youll never know which they wont get
> > along with till you try -- it even happenes to some OEM boxen) and the
> > bug only shows when using NT/2k/xp versions of the 'doze and of course
> > linux... dos and 9x arent affected because they dont issue the 'hlt'
> > instruction... AFAIK there is no workaround for windows but in linux
> > just add append=no-hlt to lilo.conf or to the loadlin line and linux
> > will run fine...
>
> Thanks.  How do we determine if this is such a cpu?  He gave us the
> computer (to use the case) and I offered to fix it.  If it is not fixable
> we get to keep it.  He said it 'runs hot' and has voltage spikes (we found
> neither yet, but did not do the burn-in).  He drilled holes in the case.
> He said it worked fine for a couple of years then became unreliable as a
> server.

its hit or miss but if it was used as a server running windows (or
linux) in the past and worked fine something else could be wrong (the
PSU would be the first thing i would try replacing)... might also try
a bigger fan-sink... or add a case fan if it doesnt have one

> >
> > if the owner of that k7 insists on XP there -might- be a workaround
> > thats not well known to fix it but it may not be easy to find
> >
> > if the system uses a VIA chipset install the "via pci latency patch"
> > (windows) and it will (should anyway) cure the hangs;
> > http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/
>
> ALI chipset.

i have a very old AMD/ALI system (Acer Aspire -- 200mhz k6) that while
no longer in use i did tinker with a program called 'atm' that ran in
win9x that issued the hlt instruction when the system was idle to cool
the cpu (the purpose of using hlt) and all kinds of weirdness
happened... buzzing in the soundcard, overheats with the motherboards
voltage regulators, jittery mouse and random complete freezes... BL
would run on that system but it didnt have the soundcard setup and i
never ran it for more than the few minutes it took to use it to do
something that was harder to do in DOS which is what ran 99.9% of the
time...


> A computer which originally had Win95 is coming Tuesday, which 'crashes
> after 2 weeks' every time she reloads XP, or ME.  For use only on the
> internet (instead of WebTV).  I will offer BL3.50 instead of XP, which is
> probably REALLY slow on a 10 year old computer.  With Sylpheed except I
> could not find any way to Compose - it is greyed out.  I probably botched
> setup.

XPlite can be used on 10yr old hardware... 2k is better tho... as far
as it crashing every 2 weeks they probably dont have a virus scanner
(or if they do its not a good one) or something else is messed up
(incorrect settings with the harddrive like turning on DMA on a system
that doesnt properly support it will mess things up at a slow pace)

try XP again (if they have it might as well use it) but turn off
'write cache' on the hdds... if that doesnt help disable DMA too (had
to do this with a laptop that runs 2k)


a bit of fun; if the webTV device used was the MSNTV2 box its possible
to put linux on it... youll get a set-top ~700mhz intel celeron-M
system ;)

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



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