Defective L2 Cache

[John M. Moniz]

Logan Rathbone wrote:

>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 ;-)
>
Logan, I'd be very interested in that page you found about deducing 
memory problems.

John.
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