Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 10:54:58 -0700 (PDT) From: William Maddox <maddox@p-1.Eng.Sun.COM> To: Michael Beckmann <beckmann@nacamar.net> Cc: hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Parity trouble with Asus mainboard Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96.970915104918.6541A-100000@p-1> In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19970915160712.00b69930@mail.nacamar.de>
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On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, Michael Beckmann wrote: > Greetings, > > I had installed 8 x 32 MB parity SIMMs in an Asus P65UP5 Rev. 2.04 > mainboard with Pentium Pro card P6ND in it. The system is equipped with one > PPro 200 CPU. Unfortunately, when I install 4, 6 or 8 of these SIMMs, > FreeBSD gives me a parity error and panics directly after the copyright > notice during boot. With 2 x 32 MB, it seems to run OK. > > This, however, happens only when I enable ECC in the BIOS. When I disable > ECC/parity, the system runs fine with 256 MB installed. I made world on the > latest 2.2-stable in this configuration, no problem. > > I also tried the same SIMMs in a Gigabyte 586 HX board, and there I can > boot and run just fine with ECC enabled in the BIOS (it's an NT system, > though). > > Any ideas ? It doesn't look to me like the SIMMs were faulty. Maybe a > problem with the parity chips ? I also exchanged the mainboard with another > one of the same type, but found the same problem. > > Michael Are you sure these are true parity SIMMs? Some cheap SIMMs use "logic parity", which just fakes a parity bit for older MBs that require it. These will not work with ECC, and should be avoided in any case. Also, you describe these SIMMs as 2 x 32, 8 x 32 and so forth. In standard nomenclature, the "32" is the width of the SIMM, i.e., 32 bits. Parity SIMMs are 2 x 36, etc. Admittedly, this doesn't explain why the Gigabyte board worked, unless somehow the ECC was disabled behind your back. --Bill
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