New mobo question

New mobo question

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings;

I've ordered a new mobo as I'm having what appears to be data bus 
problems with this one after a rather spectacular failure of a 
gforce2 video card, memtest86 says I have a lot of errors where 
00000020 was written, but 00000000 came back, at semi-random 
locations scattered thoughout half a gig of dimms running at half 
their rated DDR266 speed.  The last nibble of the address is always 
zero, and the next nibble is always even.

The new mobo is nforce2 based, a Biostar M7NCD-PRO, and will have a 
gig of memory.

Is there a way to prebuild a kernel that will run on both boards?, 
this older board is a VIA82686/VIA8233 based board, a Biostar M7VIB.

I don't run an initrd normally.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
There are 4 boxes to be used in defense of liberty. 
Soap, ballot, jury, and ammo.
Please use in that order, starting now.  -Ed Howdershelt, Author
Additions to this message made by Gene Heskett are Copyright 2004, 
Maurice E. Heskett, all rights reserved.

Re: New mobo question

[Chris Wedgwood]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 05:52:27AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:

> I've ordered a new mobo as I'm having what appears to be data bus
> problems with this one after a rather spectacular failure of a
> gforce2 video card, memtest86 says I have a lot of errors where
> 00000020 was written, but 00000000 came back, at semi-random
> locations scattered thoughout half a gig of dimms running at half
> their rated DDR266 speed.  The last nibble of the address is always
> zero, and the next nibble is always even.

Get the board replaced.

> Is there a way to prebuild a kernel that will run on both boards?,
> this older board is a VIA82686/VIA8233 based board, a Biostar M7VIB.

If I read you correctly you're getting random corruptions all over the
place so there isn't much you an do.


  --cw

Re: New mobo question

[Markus Schaber]

Hi, Chris,

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 04:20:07 -0700
Chris Wedgwood <cw@f00f.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 05:52:27AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> > I've ordered a new mobo as I'm having what appears to be data bus
> > problems with this one after a rather spectacular failure of a
> > gforce2 video card, memtest86 says I have a lot of errors where
> > 00000020 was written, but 00000000 came back, at semi-random
> > locations scattered thoughout half a gig of dimms running at half
> > their rated DDR266 speed.  The last nibble of the address is always
> > zero, and the next nibble is always even.
> 
> Get the board replaced.

Read his first sentence and you will see that he has already ordered a
new board.

> > Is there a way to prebuild a kernel that will run on both boards?,
> > this older board is a VIA82686/VIA8233 based board, a Biostar M7VIB.
> 
> If I read you correctly you're getting random corruptions all over the
> place so there isn't much you an do.

As far as I read him, he wants to build a kernel that runs on his new
board as well as on his old board.

Basically, he has to just compile a kernel that includes hardware
support for both chipsets, and all of the other hardware that is on the
boards. For processor selection, he should find the best compromise
between both processors (so try to select one that has all features that
both real processors have in common), and he might try the generic X86
optimizations, too.

HTH,
Markus


-- 
markus schaber | dipl. informatiker
logi-track ag | rennweg 14-16 | ch 8001 zürich
phone +41-43-888 62 52 | fax +41-43-888 62 53
mailto:schabios@logi-track.com | www.logi-track.com

Re: New mobo question

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 16 July 2004 07:20, Chris Wedgwood wrote:
>On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 05:52:27AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> I've ordered a new mobo as I'm having what appears to be data bus
>> problems with this one after a rather spectacular failure of a
>> gforce2 video card, memtest86 says I have a lot of errors where
>> 00000020 was written, but 00000000 came back, at semi-random
>> locations scattered thoughout half a gig of dimms running at half
>> their rated DDR266 speed.  The last nibble of the address is
>> always zero, and the next nibble is always even.
>
>Get the board replaced.
>
Its ordered from tcwo.  Along with a gig of DDR400 ram, & a new cooler 
for a fresh athlon 2800 XP.  This old 1400 has been cooking along at 
or above 70C for 3 years, 24/7/365.

>> Is there a way to prebuild a kernel that will run on both boards?,
>> this older board is a VIA82686/VIA8233 based board, a Biostar
>> M7VIB.

I guess I've answered my own question, I'm now running a 2.6.8-rc1-mm1 
kernel that has the AMD/nforce IDE stuff built in along with the VIA.  
dmesg says nothing at all about the presense of the nforce stuff.  I 
would have thought it might have tossed a line or 2 of "can't find my 
chipset" messages, but nothing came out.

I assume thats the correct drivers for an nforce2 board?

How about the ethernet on that Biostar M7NCD-PRO board, what driver 
does it need?  Currently running the 8139too.

Those are the important things, I can sort the usb & audio another 
day.

>If I read you correctly you're getting random corruptions all over
> the place so there isn't much you an do.

The strangest things are happening, like a rebuild of kde3.2.3 always 
stops with a bus error on the exact same output file.  Yum has died, 
with a python error from libxml2, and the whole python install has 
been upgraded without bothering the error.  Ditto for libxml2.

And kde3.2 occasionally forgets its filters, or changes fonts and or 
font sizes at random.

>
>  --cw
Thanks for the reply, its appreciated.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
There are 4 boxes to be used in defense of liberty. 
Soap, ballot, jury, and ammo.
Please use in that order, starting now.  -Ed Howdershelt, Author
Additions to this message made by Gene Heskett are Copyright 2004, 
Maurice E. Heskett, all rights reserved.

Re: New mobo question

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 16 July 2004 08:15, Markus Schaber wrote:
>
>As far as I read him, he wants to build a kernel that runs on his
> new board as well as on his old board.
>
>Basically, he has to just compile a kernel that includes hardware
>support for both chipsets, and all of the other hardware that is on
> the boards. For processor selection, he should find the best
> compromise between both processors (so try to select one that has
> all features that both real processors have in common), and he
> might try the generic X86 optimizations, too.
>
>HTH,
>Markus

I think I'm headed in the right direction, this kernel now has the 
AMD/nforce stuff builtin alongside the VIA.  Invisible  
to /var/log/dmesg.

Both cpu's are athlon XP's but the new one is 2x faster, besides, I 
was losing ground at setiathome, all the new hardware was passing me.  
Gotta play catchup. :-)

Thanks Markus

-- 
Cheers, Gene
There are 4 boxes to be used in defense of liberty. 
Soap, ballot, jury, and ammo.
Please use in that order, starting now.  -Ed Howdershelt, Author
Additions to this message made by Gene Heskett are Copyright 2004, 
Maurice E. Heskett, all rights reserved.