Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 23:27:18 -0400 From: "Eloy A. Paris" <Eloy.Paris@ven.ra.rockwell.com> To: questions@freebsd.org, hardware@freebsd.org Cc: Gary Chrysler <tcg@ime.net>, "Lenzi, Sergio" <lenzi@cwbone.bsi.com.br>, "M.R.Murphy" <mrm@Mole.ORG>, "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@HeadCandy.com>, sos@freebsd.org, Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>, Didier Derny <didier@aida.org>, Alex Nash <alex@fa.tdktca.com>, "Andrew V. Stesin" <stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua>, "Brant M. Katkansky" <bmk@fta.com>, "David Alderman" <dave@persprog.com> Subject: My Cyrix microprocessor/motherboard problems Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960618234526.258f136e@zeus.ven.ra.rockwell.com>
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Hello everyone. I would like to thank all of you guys that have helped me out with the problems I am experiencing with my Cyrix 486DX4/100 and my motherboard. They are bombing my processes with signals 10 (bus error) and 11 (segmentation fault) - almost all of them are 11. I am very impressed with the amount of responses I have received (29 so far) in less than 24 hours. All people that have sent suggestions and comments to me are in the "Cc:" field of this message. Thank you all!! The problem still persist after trying every single suggestion you gave me that was not a hardware change (microprocessor or motherboard.) I played with things like wait states, clock rates in the motherboard, internal and external caches disables and enables, kernel recompilation to have the needed devices, etc. Someone told me about a bug in 2.1.0-RELEASE but I personally do not think this is the cause of my problem. I have a Dell Latitude XPi notebook with a Pentium 90 and running FreeBSD 2.1.0-RELEASE and it has NEVER given to me any bus error or segmentation faults. The same person that told me about the bug told me to get the latest 2.1.0-stable but he also pointed out that the problems would still persist because they seem to be hardware related. I, as I think everybody else does, agree. I recognize I have a cheap motherboard. I need and want to solve this problem so my action items for the following days are (in order): 1) Replace the Cyrix 486DX4 with a genuine Intel DX4. 2) If this still gives segmentation faults, the problem is not the CPU or it is a combination of both the Cyrix and the motherboard so I am going to take my IDE harddrive with FreeBSD to another machine with an Intel DX2/66 with a motherboard I know that works (it's a Digital computer, like one that has been running Linux for about a year now with no problems - very good quality). I want to test my FreeBSD installation just to be sure. This should work so my next action item will be: 3) Get a different motherboard, one of good quality. I'll try to test the Cyrix DX4 on it just to know if the problem is the microprocessor or the motherboard. These 3 action items should take me to the solution or at least help us to find out who is causing the problems. These action items depend on how helpful my hardware vendor will be :-( I am going to use minimal hardware on these tests: my 1 Gig. hard drive, two serial ports, one parallel port and 16 Megs. of RAM. No external caches (because I do not have any). The problem is very easy to reproduce: just recompile the kernel, bind or elm or just the command "cd /usr/local/bin; man -a *|col -b > /var/tmp/junk_test" (as suggested by Gary Chrysler <tcg@ime.net>). I will keep y'all informed of any progress. See ya!!! Eloy.- -- Eloy A. Paris Global Technical Services Rockwell Automation de Venezuela Telephone: 58-2-9432311 Fax: 58-2-9430323
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