Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2001 14:46:12 -0600 From: Glenn Johnson <glennpj@charter.net> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>, FreeBSD Hackers <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors? Message-ID: <20011228204612.GA1226@gforce.johnson.home> In-Reply-To: <20011228181009.F95692@monorchid.lemis.com> References: <20011228181009.F95692@monorchid.lemis.com>
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On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 06:10:09PM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: > I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work > machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm > currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and > an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave > me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it > would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the > memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like > that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard > and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang > within 8 hours when doing 'make release' > > Just for the fun of it, I tried running Linux on it. I've been > running a kernel build and 'make clean' on it now for 36 hours, and > it's still running fine. Yesterday some Linux friends of mine came > around and looked at it and told me that the Linux kernel I was > running on the machine (2.4.16) had had a number of AMD-specific > fixes put in. He didn't go into more detail, unfortunately, but I'll > ask him again when I have time: it could be something relating to > chipset bugs we have seen and fixed. It would help to know, though, > if other people are experiencing similar problems. Please let me > know if you're having problems with AMD processors which seem to be > specific to FreeBSD, especially if they're hangs (i.e. the machine > stops reacting, but the display still shows the last state, it doesn't > reboot or panic). I have had this exact problem. I have an Epox 8KTA board with a 1GHz Athlon (Thunderbird) with 256MB of PC-133 memory. I would consistently get random errors, usually during a compilation, using the default BIOS settings. After fiddling with some of the BIOS options, such as enabling PCI burst, the system runs pretty stable. However, occasionally I will get that freeze that you refer to during a buildworld. As far as I can tell though if I set the memory clock to 100MHz the problem goes away completely, or at least I have not observed it happen yet. It is really hard for me to say if this is FreeBSD specific because I do not tend to stress the system much when I have Linux running. My wife has an identical system running Windows 98SE and she has no problems but I know that I have installed software from Epox that specifically addresses some issues with the VIA chipset so that may be why. -- Glenn Johnson glennpj@charter.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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