Defective L2 Cache

[Logan Rathbone]

Hi guys.  I've had a bit of a problem for quite a while, but it has only
become very annoying as of late.

I have a problem with my memory, and I'm 99% sure it's my L2 cache.  It
all started when I upgraded my motherboard last year.  I was on a bit of
a budget, so I opted for a rather cheap board (I can't even think of the
brand off hand...) with an AMD K7 2.2 GHz processor (again not sure
exactly what its "brand" name is.. but those are its tech specs).  I
also upgraded my RAM from 128 to 512, which is already beginning to show
its age ;-)

Anyway, here's the dealio.  I noticed that after I left my computer
running for a while, compiling kernels and the like, my compilations
would suddenly stop with a SIGSEGV, an internal compiler error.  At
first it wasn't a big deal; I just had to start from where I left off.

But still, I decided to run memtest86.  I'm a fairly patient person; but
after it had been running for over 2 days without reporting a single
error, I had to stop it.  There's work to do, y'know.

But now, a year later, I run into problems that reach as far as the user
level.  If I leave my computer on for about 24 hours or so, programs
start randomly crashing (and I'm talking EVERYTHING, from VIM to Mozilla
to irssi).

Reluctant to try memtest86 again, I found a very helpful page about
deducing memory problems, and finding out where they lie.  I think I
narrowed it down to the L2 cache -- it's a 256-meg btw -- I disabled the
L2 cache, and while the system was slow as hell, I didn't get any
internal compiler errors, and everything was otherwise fine.

I used to have Windows XP a while ago, but since I upgraded my hard
drive (previous thread on here somewhere...) I haven't gotten around to
re-installing it.  But when it was there, it seemed to run without
problems.  But that's not exactly a fair comparison, as I never compile
anything on Windows, and don't really use it all that often, just for my
family.

So my question is... what do I do to fix this?  Does the part have to be
replaced?  And why would it not cause any problems whatsoever on
Windows, what sets it apart in that respect?

Sorry for the long-winded post, but I hope someone here can help ;-)

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