From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Oct 25 13:17:52 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA19850 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 13:17:52 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from earth.mat.net (root@earth.mat.net [206.246.122.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA19845 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 13:17:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from chuckr@glue.umd.edu) Received: from picnic.mat.net (picnic.mat.net [206.246.122.117]) by earth.mat.net (8.8.7/8.6.12) with SMTP id QAA29210; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 16:17:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 15:16:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey X-Sender: chuckr@picnic.mat.net To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=DEor=F0ur?= Ivarsson cc: "Jamil J. Weatherbee" , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Parity Ram In-Reply-To: <34524948.41C67EA6@est.is> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from QUOTED-PRINTABLE to 8bit by hub.freebsd.org id NAA19846 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sat, 25 Oct 1997, Žoršur Ivarsson wrote: > Jamil J. Weatherbee wrote: > > > > Can someone fill me in on when you would want to use parity ram as opposed > > to non-parity ram these days? If there was some anomaly in memory how > > would freebsd handle it (is there a trap for parity error?) > > As far as I know, the 'parity check fail' is connected to NMI of CPU. > In most cases the BIOS rutines accept this and halt the computer with no > information on where or why , only something like 'NMI detected, system > halted' or > 'Memory parity fail - NMI generated , system halted'. Huh ? BIOS routines? What's that got to do with FreeBSD? We don't use the BIOS routines, they don't get called at all, right? If there's a parity violation, if that's wired to NMI, then the NMI get's called, but what that does is determined by FreeBSD, not your BIOS. > > The only reason for this might be giving you some warning of failed > memory rather > than failed software. > > This has helped me several times when I was suspecting broken memory in > the old days (90-93) :-) > > Thordur Ivarsson > > ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@glue.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 213 Lakeside Drive Apt T-1 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run Journey2 and picnic, both FreeBSD (301) 220-2114 | version 3.0 current -- and great FUN! ----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------