Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 11:39:34 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Chris Wasser <cwasser@v-wave.com>, Olaf Hoyer <Olaf.Hoyer@netsurf.de> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Fwd: Major AMD K7 Problems under 4.0-S Message-ID: <20000503113934.A8585@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20000409220240.A54143@area51.v-wave.com> References: <4.1.20000502145857.00a1f7e0@mail.rz.fh-wilhelmshaven.de> <20000502192207.A549@freebie.lemis.com> <4.1.20000502145857.00a1f7e0@mail.rz.fh-wilhelmshaven.de> <20000503084811.A1654@freebie.lemis.com> <4.1.20000503025803.009d06c0@mail.rz.fh-wilhelmshaven.de> <20000409220240.A54143@area51.v-wave.com>
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On Wednesday, 3 May 2000 at 3:11:41 +0200, Olaf Hoyer wrote: > At 08:48 03.05.00 +0930, you wrote: >> On Tuesday, 2 May 2000 at 15:01:26 +0200, Olaf Hoyer wrote: >>> At 19:22 02.05.00 +0930, you wrote: >>>> I've just got a new Athlon machine with an Epox EP-7KXA motherboard. >>>> It comes highly recommended, but I have some severe problems with the >>>> timekeeping: it seems that the BIOS does not allow me to disable APM, >>>> and the 8254 timekeeping goes crazy, running up to 10 times as fast as >>>> real time. Does anybody else have one of these boards? Have you seen >>>> the problem? (How) did you fix it? >>> >>> Have talked to some guys, which also sell this board, and they told >>> me that they'd first flash the BIOS to the current one, dated 25/4, >>> IIRC. There were some issues in the past that were fixed with BIOS >>> upgrades. >>> >>> They found it very stable, also running some benches a complete >>> weekend to test stability (even under windows, it survived a whole >>> weekend...) >> >> Yes, but have you tried it under FreeBSD? I have the BIOS here, but I >> can't flash it because it insists on flashing from floppy. But >> looking at the list of fixes, I don't see anything there about APM. >> My BIOS is dated 17 April, so there's probably not much difference. > > Well, they are mostly M$ folks... (Mostly some small retailers in > US) But Epox has a history of BIOS issues for years, and those guys > told me that BIOS updates fix in most cases the troubles you have > with the mainboards, since the mechanical quality is quite good. So > I'd flash the lastes BIOS from some bootable floppy (there should be > some M$ machine being around somewhere). Not every error or glitch > is documented... No, but when it's something as blatant as a missing option in the BIOS menus, you'd think they'd mention it. > Or be the one who files a bug report to Epox about APM ;-)) Done yesterday: > Customer email: grog@lemis.com > Subject: Error in EP-7KXA BIOS of 17 April 2000 > Case # 5224636 > > I have just purchased an EP-7KXA motherboard with BIOS dated 17 April > 2000. It is not possible to disable power management. According to > the manual, the menu selection Power Management Setup/Power Management > should give the four choices "Disabled", "Min saving", "Max saving" > and "User defined". In fact, the "Disabled" menu item is missing. > > This board is running very unstably. The time runs ahead up to ten > times the real time, causing the system to hang repeatedly. > > I cannot identify a serial number on the motherboard. The number > supplied is invented to keep your web software happy. > Of course, there may be the slight statistical chance that you got a > bad mainboard... No, we've had other reports: On Sun, 9 Apr 2000 21:52:55 -0600, Chris Wasser <cwasser@v-wave.com> wrote: > To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG > > I'm sure this has been hashed over and over countless times, but I > can't seem to resolve this problem locally and figured I'd shoot it > out to the mailing list here and see if anyone has any ideas. This > machine is having critical problems preventing it from being put > into production and I'd _really_ appriciate any > information/insight/ideas people can shoot over to me to try. > > Please respond on questions/bugs@FreeBSD.ORG or via email to the above > address (not subscribed to freebsd-hardware) > > Please note, I have an identical AMD K7-700 system running, the only > difference is it has a ASUS K7M motherboard and 3c905B-TX nics and a > Mach64-GB AGP video card. It does not exibit this behavior. It uses the > AMD-751 and VIA 82C686 chipset. > > Here's the system: > > AMD K7-700 (0.18fab) running @ 700MHz (100x7.0) > 256MB PC133 (Running @ 100MHz) > 1 3Com 3c905C-TX connected @ 10Base-T to a cablemodem (xl0) > 1 3Com 3c905C-TX connected @ 100Base-T full-duplex to LAN (xl1) > EpoX 7KXA motherboard (VIA KX133 chipset/82C686) > 2 x Quantum KX 20GB ATA-66 (running @ ATA-66) > ASUS 50x ATA-33 IDE CDROM > ATI Rage 128-RF AGP running @ AGP2x > 300W power supply > > The system and kernel were cvsup'd and built on March 30th/2000 from > stock 4.0-RELEASE .. xl0 was enabled but there was no active connection > during this test. The only active card w/link was xl1 @ 100Base-T > full-duplex (switched). > > The actual time and my date below for the dmesg output is inaccurate > (forgot to set the system date & time in the bios, nothing major.), it > was re-compiled today [not cvsup'd, just recompiled the kernel when I > added new options, the source on the system is from March30th, the only > change I made to the actual source tree was from PR17831 which I submitted > a few days ago.] (April 9th) > > When doing file xfers on the local lan (xl1) the system will eventually > produce error messages up microuptime() going backwards: > > microuptime() went backwards (3821.740589 -> 3821,720223) > microuptime() went backwards (3821.774554 -> 3821,731215) > ..etc etc > > I had to terminate syslogd because it was spending so much time logging > that it was dragging down the system when the microuptime() messages > started appearing (choppy keyboard response over ssh and locally at > console and the load avg was a solid 2.01 across the board) > > This happens under heavy network load (transferring +7GB files over the > local LAN) and processes start showing negative run times or completely > outrageous run time: > > root 0 0.0 0.0 0 0 ?? DLs 10:19AM 11:36.96 (swapper) > root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ?? DL 10:19AM 359:53.83 (syncer) > root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ?? DL 10:19AM 11:48.00 (pagedaemon) > > I set sysctl to use accurate time measurements thinking that might provide > a solution (after cruising through older mailing list archives and made > no difference): > > kern.timecounter.method: 1 > kern.timecounter.hardware: i8254 This all corresponds exactly to what I saw with the same motherboard. Anyway, the good news is that it doesn't happen under -CURRENT, and since I was planning to run -CURRENT on it anyway, this is now a non-issue. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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