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Date:      Thu, 7 Oct 1999 22:57:47 -0700 (PDT)
From:      "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net>
To:        dillon@apollo.backplane.com (Matthew Dillon)
Cc:        ady@warpnet.ro (Adrian Penisoara), freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: [Patches avail?] Re: MMAP() in STABLE/CURRENT ...
Message-ID:  <199910080557.WAA47842@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net>
In-Reply-To: <199910071709.KAA95541@apollo.backplane.com> from Matthew Dillon at "Oct 7, 1999 10:09:23 am"

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> :Hi again,
> :
> : Whoops: a few hours after downgrading to 3.1-STABLE I had a double fault
> :error (strange, it didn't look like a normal panic screen, just the
> :message and the content of three registers, then the syncing disks
> :message). It seems that I might be wrong about hardware not being the
> :problem.
> :
> : I've changed the motherboard, CPU, memory and the video card and I'm
> :waiting to see how much it's going to stay up (I have 1day 1hour uptime so
> :far)...
> :
> : Thanks,
> : Ady (@warpnet.ro)
> 
>     One thing I do on all 'server' class machines that I buy (and this is
>     also something that BEST instituted as policy in 1998) is to only buy
>     motherboards with ECC support and only buy ECC memory to go along with
>     that support.  If you are using a non-ECC motherboard or non-ECC memory
>     I would heartily recommend that you adopt the same policy.  Not that your
>     problem is necessarily memory related, but I've found that memory-related
>     problems account for at least 80% of the 'difficult to locate' hardware 
>     problems that normally occur with PC technology.

And to add support to this, AAI, the oldest vendor of FreeBSD specific
systems, implemented a similiar policy on all system sold sometime in 1992.
But at that time ECC was not avaliable so it was ``parity memory is required,
and the chipset must support it''.  As soon as ECC chipsets hit the market
the policy was changed to refect this.  We also require all memory that
we purchase be backed by a no-fuss lifetime warranty, which we pass on to
the end user.

I strongly recommend that any one running Unix on a PC do the same, it
will save you in the long run.  Since implementing the policies we have
seen a near 0 memory related problem after burnin with our systems.

-- 
Rod Grimes - KD7CAX - (RWG25)                    rgrimes@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net


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