*BSD News Article 59303


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From: nate@trout.sri.MT.net (Nate Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: My hardware loves 2.0 but doesn't like 2.1
Date: 17 Jan 1996 16:52:37 GMT
Organization: SRI Intl. - Montana Operations
Lines: 44
Message-ID: <4dj9gl$6re@helena.MT.net>
References: <4cs961$m4j@Mercury.mcs.com>
Reply-To: "Nate Williams" <nate@sneezy.sri.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: trout.sri.mt.net

In article <4cs961$m4j@Mercury.mcs.com>,
Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> wrote:
>
>My FreeBSD system has always been rock-solid and dependable.  I
>recently installed 2.1 and strange things began to happen.  Three
>noteable symptoms:
>
>1) System reboots randomly (several times a day)
>2) cc blows out with because of Signal 4 and Signal 6 errors
>3) I periodically get an error to the effect that my host adapter (Adaptec
>   1542B) has timed out and that a page of VM cannot be swapped in.
>
>The base system is a 486SLC clone.  When I installed 2.1 I added 8
>Megs of RAM to the existing RAM (for a total of 16 Megs) and a math
>co-processor.
>
>Symptom 1) went away when I removed the additional memory (the memory
>itself is fine, I tried replacing that first).

It may be a motherboard problem then.  Either that, or the memory isn't
fine, and the replacement memory was also.

>Symptom 2) went away when I got rid of the co-processor.

What kind of co-processor.

>Symptom 3) still shows up occasionally,

Bad memory will *often* cause these sorts of errors.

>My sense of all this is that I have developed a flakey motherboard
>(possible) or that 2.1 has a latent crawling thing or two in it
>(unlikely but also possible).  Any comment for you all in netland ...?

I doubt 2.1 very much, especially considering that the problems didn't
show up until you added new hardware.


Nate
-- 
nate@sneezy.sri.com    | Research Engineer, SRI Intl. - Montana Operations
nate@trout.sri.MT.net  | Loving life in God's country, the great state of
work #: (406) 449-7662 | Montana.
home #: (406) 443-7063 | A fly pole and a 4x4 Chevy truck = Heaven on Earth