Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 22:15:06 -0700 (PDT) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> To: pechter@shell.monmouth.com (Bill/Carolyn Pechter) Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: VLB/Cyrix motherboard problems Message-ID: <199608250515.WAA17605@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> In-Reply-To: <199608242025.QAA12872@shell.monmouth.com> from Bill/Carolyn Pechter at "Aug 24, 96 04:25:03 pm"
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> Folks -- this ain't my week for hardware luck. > > I just picked up a MV035 Vesa motherboard with a Cyrix 586 CPU (120 Mhz) > and moved my entire ISA setup to it. Get rid of that Cyrix chip (replace it with either an AMD or Intel) and see if your problem goes away. Also if you can change the Cyrix internal cache mode from Write Back to Write Thru try that. Check BIOS settings for ISA bus speed and make sure you are running the ISA bus between 7.5 and 8.3 MHz. Barring that it sounds as if you have a motherboard that just does not understand bus-mastered cards and how to properly do cache coherency. ... > > Questions: > > Does an ISA busmaster card need to be in a VESA busmaster slot. (I assumed > that the busmaster master/slave labels only applied to VESA cards > and ISA busmaster cards could go in any 16 bit slot. (Boy I miss the > PDP11 Unibus.) ISA busmaster cards should be able to go in any slot, if the motherboard design is correct. If the design is not correct and this is a 1542C or later card it should give you a DMA test error if you run the on board memory access test built into the 1542C and later bioses. > Has anyone else had a problem like this. Symptom: The card is recognized, > runs ROM diags on the controller, sizes the scsi bus correctly. > It, however, doesn't see the FreeBSD partitions at turbo speed or any > speed with Cache on. The OS/2 boot manager comes back and complains that > the default partition (FreeBSD on sd0) is not there. Sounds like a severly broken cache coherency problem :-( > If I leave it alone, dos boots, slowly. :-( > I'm trying to figure out if it's the CPU, Memory, Cache or bus and > motherboard. My syspect is motherboard or CPU. > Suggestions, besides send it all back and eat the 15% restocking fee... Tell the supplier that this board does not work correctly, tell them that it won't work with an adaptec 1542, tell them you would like to exchange it for another model board and are willing to pay the small difference. DON'T give them the 15% restocking fee for selling you a board that does not work correctly. -- Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com Accurate Automation Company Reliable computers for FreeBSD
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