From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Apr 7 00:50:31 1995 Return-Path: questions-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id AAA25612 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 7 Apr 1995 00:50:31 -0700 Received: from tau-ceti.isc-br.com (root@tau-ceti.isc-br.com [129.189.2.133]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id AAA25604 for ; Fri, 7 Apr 1995 00:50:29 -0700 Received: by tau-ceti.isc-br.com (Smail3.1.28.1 #4) id m0rx8fS-0000HsC; Fri, 7 Apr 95 00:41 PDT Received: from timesink.spk.wa.us (timesink.spk.wa.us [127.0.0.1]) by timesink.spk.wa.us (8.6.9/8.6.6) with SMTP id XAA01121 for ; Thu, 6 Apr 1995 23:43:22 -0700 Message-Id: <199504070643.XAA01121@timesink.spk.wa.us> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.5.3 12/28/94 To: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Memory errors above 16MB... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 06 Apr 1995 23:43:22 -0700 From: Keith Walker Sender: questions-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk This might be a little off topic, but I know I've seen this subject come across the mailinglist before... I just upgraded my 486/50DX2 by adding another 16 MB of RAM to it for a total of 20 MB. I also upgraded the tag and cache ram (to 16K and 256K respectively). All of the memory tests are OK with the toy memory check programs, but when I run FreeBSD2.0 (the ultimate memory checker), I get unrepeatable, bizarre errors like programs failing to compile that have always compiled in the past, tcsh dumping core for no reason, X just freezing up, etc. Odd thing is, if I take out 4MB to decrease the total system DRAM down to 16MB, everything seems fine. Now, I seem to remember someone far more knowledgable than me (Terry? Jordan? Garrett?) talking about some older ISA boards (like mine) that had cache coherency problems or something like that when more than 16 MB was added. Am I right in this one? Is there a way to test for this problem, short of having unrepeatable errors all the time? I'd kinda like to know so I can return the memory or just learn to live with only (!) 16MB of RAM. Thanks for your time, -- Keith Walker kew@timesink.spk.wa.us Spokane, Washington, USA FreeBSD 2.0