Hardware Issues?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 12:23:40PM -0400, Adam Raymond wrote:
> I've been running two slackware boxes (headless) to the side of my
> desk. One is a p2 with 333mhz, the other is a p3 with 600 mhz. The
> better box (600mhz) has always given my problems. It shuts down
> randomly. I ave frequent kernel panics. So after school finished, I
> decided to take a good look at the box. One error I noticed was
> something to do with a rambus error. So i took out one stick of ram,
> and tested the other. Vice versa. I found out that the 128 stick was
> the busted one :( (I think). But the box is still active very weird. I
> hates the ubuntu install, and cant even load mandrake. Slackware seems
> to be the only distro it will handle.
> 
> Regardless, there is some wonky hardware in it. and I need to find out
> what the problem is.

What chipset is that machine using?

I remember there was an intel chipset (the i820 if I remember right)
that was designed for Rambus memory, but had a rambus to sdram convertor
chip on the board so it could use sdram dimms instead.  That convertor
chip turned out to almost never be stable and the chipset was eventually
recalled.  A lot of boards makers ended up replacing a whole lot of
mainboards because of that (especially asus that had made hundreds of
thousands of these boards, over half the taol according to what I read
at the time).

Not one of intel's proudest moments in chip design.

If that is what is in that system, don't expect it to ever work
correctly.

Other than that, I can't imagine how you could get a rambus error unless
the system actually uses rambus memory in which case you spent too much
when you got that machine.

Len Sorensen
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