Messages in this thread | | | From | (Derek Fawcus) | Subject | Re: Another oops (1.3.93) | Date | Sun, 28 Apr 1996 02:18:23 +0100 (BST) |
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Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Fri, 26 Apr 1996, Matthew White wrote: > > > > I do have a Cyrix chip. 486-DX2/66. And you know, I got another oops on > > Apr. 23. As well, the 00000004 came up. I can send that to you too, if > > you'd like. If it makes a difference, I also a victim of the sig11 bug > > (I even got one while making clean!) but I 99.44% sure it's my cache memory. > > Ok, this thing is more or less confirmed - there are some serious > problems with Cyrix chips. Not nice.
Just as another datapoint, I've been soaking a bunch of machines which contain SGS Thompson devices (a rebadged Cyrix), they all get a similar problem. Either a sig11 or a kernel panic as above.
The intended use of these systems is for a turnkey control/EPOS system running a different OS (FlexOS). We were experiencing a number of system panics and unexplained behaviour. This occured around the time that we switched to the SGS devices. However these failures wouldn't happen with any sort of pattern except that memory appeared to be getting corrupted, so I set up the kit to run Linux as a test.
The soak test simply consisted of a continuous loop of recompiling the kernel:
while make clean && make zImage && make modules && make modules_install; do echo .version >/dev/tty8; done
These would usually die after 3 to 5 complete loops. The hardware itself was known to be good, and the memory system was running at the lowest possible settings. Replacing the ST device (DX2-66) with an alternative suppliers (sometime a 40 MHz bus device) would allow the test to run without problems. The longest I left if for was 27 complete loops.
These tests were tried out on 3 different makes of motherboards. Eventually the SGS devices would always fail.
As a result of this, we've now stopped using these SGS Thompson devices (or any Cyrix varient), and are now specifying AMD devices (120 and/or 133).
DF -- Derek Fawcus (G7FVS) df@eyrie.demon.co.uk
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