*BSD News Article 74030


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!qns3.qns.net!imci4!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.jaguNET.com!confucius.omniscient.com!emerys
From: emerys@confucius.omniscient.com (Sean Emery)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Strange new errors with 32mb upgrade
Date: 17 Jul 1996 15:30:01 GMT
Organization: jaguNET Access Services
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <4sj0tp$3a7@skydiver.jaguNET.com>
References: <4sbhat$q7c@skydiver.jaguNET.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: confucius.jagunet.com
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]

Sean Emery (emerys@confucius.omniscient.com) wrote:
: Hello all, I have been getting several strange effects after adding some 
: memory to my system.  (total of 48mb now.)

: First thing I noticed is that vi (and it's derivitives nvi, etc.) and talk
: would core dump upon invocation.  reboot fixed.

: Second thing, find command always produced a bus error.  Reboot fixed.

: Third thing, a 'du' locked up my system and necessitated manual fsck'ing 
: upon reboot.

: Fourth thing, X sometimes exits prematurely with a buserror or segfault.
: Not usually on its own, though, when I've done something (new window or
: something) to upset it. After this happens, X exits almost immediately
: with the same error when restarted (until reboot, of course.)

: Fifth thing, have rebooted my machine left the room to get a coke and
: returned to find it rebooting again...  weird, huh?

: I bought 2 4x32mb simms (rated at 60ns although I use them at 70) and 
: added them to the four 4MB sims that I already had.  Is this the
: possible effects of defective RAM? or should I recompile the kernel with
: the option of more than 32 MB of memory or something like that.  

Well, someone mailed me with a suggestion to check out 'bounce buffer'ing
that FreeBSD does to help insure that DMA ISA cards (maybe SCSI) aren't
conflicting with the fact that I have more than 16mb of memory.  

In response, the only ISA card that I have is an 8bit SoundblasterPro.
I do have a SCSI card, NCR825 PCI.  The 'handbook' is very terse 
concerning these 'bounce buffers', so if anyone has more insight, I'd 
be surely thankful for the info or pointer where I can find more info.

Thanks again,

Sean Emery
emerys@confucius.jagunet.com