Re: OT: System stable at 95MHz, unstable at 100MHz
First of all, you may find that chasing this just isn't worth your time.
The difference between 95Mhz & 100Mhz bus just isn't that great. You might
also try overclocking to 95x4.5=427Mhz.
General stuff:
Whenever I run into a problem like this the first place I go is to Dejanews.
The group comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips is an excellent resource. Also
there is a news group for Asus, alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus. Anad's
hardware guide (I don't have the link but Yahoo probably does) had a good
article on SDRAM a while back which you'll want to look at if you end up
buying more/different ram. You might also check out the Asus web site.
They have had several BIOS upgrades over past 6 months so you might want to
see if the latest BIOS fixes your problem.
Specifics:
This is usually either a ram or cache issue. I know you said that you tried
replacing the ram but if you got it from the same vendor and he/she got it
from the same source...... I'm not talking about "defective" ram but rather
ram being sold as PC100 when it really isn't. Likewise the cache might not
be quite up to snuff. It's possible that Asus made a batch of MBs that
included borderline cache. If you disable the L2 cache in BIOS you should
be able to eliminate that one right off. If the cache is OK then you want
to check again the BIOS ram timings. Specifically, you want to be sure the
ram is set to "CAS 3" instead of "CAS 2" and try disabling SPD. If there is
a "66 Mhz SDRAM" setting try that.
If you end up buying another DIMM feel free to e-mail me and I can send you
some info. or at least some links that I don't have handy at the moment.
In any case, I hope this helps.
On Tue, Mar 16, 1999 at 09:34:32AM -0500, Raymond A. Ingles wrote:
>
> Last month I upgraded my system with a bunch o' new parts. Here's what I
> got:
>
> ASUS P5A Super-socket-7 motherboard
> AMD K6-2 400MHz processor
> 128MB PC-100 RAM
> IBM 4.5GB SCSI-2 drive (2.5GB for Linux, 2GB for Win)
>
> I moved over a lot of my old parts, like:
>
> Diamond Stealth 64 (S3 Trio64 chip) video card
> NCR53c825 SCSI controller
> 425MB IDE drive as hda (all for Win98) (hey, my wife wants it)
> 4x CDROM as hdc
>
> Anyway, I keep getting random sig11's and other problems when I push the
> system hard. Generally, if I repeatedly compile a kernel, sooner or later
> I get hosed. Either a sig11 (seg fault), sig4 (illegal instruction), or
> corruption in the RAM cache (one-character corruption, e.g. DEVICE
> becoming DtVICE, that goes away when I reboot), and so forth.
>
> First, I got a better CPU fan, and used thermal grease, but it didn't
> help. I slowed the SCSI bus from 10MHz to 5MHz - still no good. Then, I
> backed off on the CPU speed, to 350MHz (3.5x100MHz). Still failed. Then I
> dropped the bus speed to 95MHz - finally, things seemed to work.
>
> Okay, I thought, let's try replacing parts 'til we find the problem. The
> place I bought the stuff has been very nice about things. I swapped out
> the memory for a different DIMM, and I couldn't even finish one compile.
> Hmmm. I swapped the motherboard - better, but still a problem. Last night
> I swapped the CPU - still not stable at 100MHz. At this point, the only
> part that I haven't swapped out is the case.
>
> For a while it looked like the CPU temperature was correlated with the
> problem, but I'm not so sure now. I've also tried setting the bus to
> 100MHz and slowing down the memory timings in the BIOS. It hasn't had any
> effect. At 100MHz, I can't compile more than 1 kernel in a row, and at
> 95MHz I had a script run overnight - 71 kernels compiled with no problems.
>
> At this point, I don't have any good ideas. I swear, I am *not*
> overclocking - I'm running everything at the rated speeds... or below,
> now. The motherboard has voltage and temperature sensors and both
> motherboards that I've tried have shown acceptable readings.
>
> I only have three theories left. One, I'm getting radio interference at
> 100MHz from somewhere. I'm going to try overclocking to 105MHz tonight,
> just for the sheer heck of it. (It'd be something if that worked, wouldn't
> it? :-/ ) Two, it's the case && || power supply. If all else fails, I'll
> try swapping *that* Wednesday. Three, the place I bought from got a bad
> batch of one part or another, and I just keep getting bad
> memory/motherboards/CPUs.
>
> Does anyone have any other suggestions, ideas, or wild flights of fancy?
> When it works, it's a *great* system - the kernel compiles in 3 minutes.
> But if I can't trust it, it's no good to me. And I paid for 100MHz, dang
> it - I don't want to run it at 95.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ray Ingles (248) 377-7735 ray.ingles@fanucrobotics.com
>
> "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman
> she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again."
> - TV listing for the Wizard of Oz in the Marin Independent Journal
>
>
>
> --
> Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe debian-user-request@lists.debian.org < /dev/null
>
--
Ray
nmos@sonictech.net
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