From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Jan 8 10:38: 5 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mail.wolves.k12.mo.us (mail.wolves.k12.mo.us [207.160.214.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8AAF937B747 for ; Mon, 8 Jan 2001 10:16:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.wolves.k12.mo.us (cdillon@mail.wolves.k12.mo.us [207.160.214.1]) by mail.wolves.k12.mo.us (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA98963; Mon, 8 Jan 2001 12:14:54 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us) Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 12:14:53 -0600 (CST) From: Chris Dillon To: Francisco Reyes Cc: "Daniel O'Connor" , FreeBSD Chat List , David Kelly Subject: Re: ECC worth the extra cost for SOHO server? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Francisco Reyes wrote: > On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Chris Dillon wrote: > > > AFAIK, with every X86 chipset I've used at least, the correction > > happens automatically, and the NMI is only there to alert you that it > > has happened. Most systems will let you turn the NMI off for > > corrections and only issue an NMI for an un-correctable error. > > But how will it "alert"? Will show up on the screen? It alerts the OS by issuing an NMI (Non-Maskable Interrupt). What happens after that is up to the OS. The OS will generally as a "bad thing" and halt. AFAIK, FreeBSD will always panic whenever it receives an NMI (unless possibly you specify the NMI_POWERFAIL option in your kernel config), so I simply turn off NMIs for correctable errors and leave the NMI on for non-correctable errors. That way FreeBSD will not panic when a correction has happened and it can carry on its merry business, but it will take the proper action by panicing when a non-correctable error has happened. > I finally found an Athlon Tbird motherboard that supports ECC. > Contrary to previous info IT IS KT133. Abit K7V (I think that is > the model.. it is an Abit board anyway). I wouldn't trust any of those VIA chipsets, especially to do ECC. You'd be better off getting a motherboard with an Intel 440BX chipset and a processor to match (wether its a Celeron, PII, PIII). I'm not sure if the newer Intel 815 does ECC or not, but it would be a better option if it does. If you're rabid Anti-Intel, either get a board with AMD's 750 chipset (the first Athlon chipset) and a supported processor, or get a board with their newest 760 chipset, which you might have a hard time finding at the moment. If money is no object, your best bet is to get a motherboard with one of the ServerWorks chipsets on it (very sweet chipset), which unfortunately only support Intel processors at the moment. One of those motherboards will set you back about $600 or more, but they're the only option, IMHO, for a good X86 server. -- Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon@inter-linc.net FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet. For IA32 and Alpha architectures. IA64, PPC, and ARM under development. http://www.freebsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message