Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 20:36:16 -0400 From: "Paul A. Howes" <pahowes@fair-ware.com> To: <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: Make world is dying... Message-ID: <PCEHKHHDDCJMAMJLBLNCMECEDCAA.pahowes@fair-ware.com>
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[-- Attachment #1 --] All- I think I found the problem. I have used the memory before, it was known good. I swapped it out, and had the same problem. I tried a second, identical, CPU with a new heat sink, and still had the same problem. I received a thought-provoking email from one kind FreeBSD user that pointed me to the CPU I was using: The Cyrix P-166 itself, was the problem. The email is reproduced below: If it's occurring in the same place consistently, it's not a RAM failure; I used to have a Cx-6x86L-PR166 (ie. Pre-MMX Cx) and it died at roughly the same place in a makeworld consistently; at the time I figured that I'd cooked the CPU in it's lifetime (was prone to overheating), ditched it in favour of a Pentium-100 and it all worked well.... no changes made other than the CPU. That RAM is still doing sterling service in a dual PPro system now. If that's still the case regardless, then it's either a Cyrix CPU bug or a code generation bug in GCC that affects them specifically. This turned out to be exactly my case. I installed a spare Pentium-100 I have, and buildworld is working flawlessly, so far. Evidently, there's a CPU-specific bug in "cc1" that causes it to crash on this particular Cyrix processor. I do not know enough about the differences between the older-generation Cyrix processors and the Pentium processors of the same vintage to draw any conclusions, but I would be learn more about this phenomenon. -- Paul A. Howes pahowes@fair-ware.com [-- Attachment #2 --] <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 5.50.4207.2601" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY> <P><SPAN class=078202800-19092000><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk>All-</FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN class=078202800-19092000><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk>I think I found the problem. I have used the memory before, it was known good. I swapped it out, and had the same problem. I tried a second, identical, CPU with a new heat sink, and still had the same problem. I received a thought-provoking email from one kind FreeBSD user that pointed me to the CPU I was using: The Cyrix P-166 itself, was the problem. The email is reproduced below:</FONT></SPAN></P> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <P><SPAN class=078202800-19092000><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk>If it's occurring in the same place consistently, it's not a RAM failure; I<SPAN class=078202800-19092000> </SPAN>used to have a Cx-6x86L-PR166 (ie. Pre-MMX Cx) and it died at roughly the<SPAN class=078202800-19092000> </SPAN>same place in a makeworld consistently; at the time I figured that I'd<SPAN class=078202800-19092000> </SPAN>cooked the CPU in it's lifetime (was prone to overheating), ditched it in<SPAN class=078202800-19092000> </SPAN>favour of a Pentium-100 and it all worked well.... no changes made other<SPAN class=078202800-19092000> </SPAN>than the CPU. That RAM is still doing sterling service in a dual PPro system<SPAN class=078202800-19092000> </SPAN>now.</FONT></P> <P><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk>If that's still the case regardless, then it's either a Cyrix CPU bug or a<SPAN class=078202800-19092000> </SPAN>code generation bug in GCC that affects them specifically.</FONT></P></SPAN></BLOCKQUOTE> <P><SPAN class=078202800-19092000><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk>This turned out to be exactly my case. I installed a spare Pentium-100 I have, and buildworld is working flawlessly, so far. Evidently, there's a CPU-specific bug in "cc1" that causes it to crash on this particular Cyrix processor. I do not know enough about the differences between the older-generation Cyrix processors and the Pentium processors of the same vintage to draw any conclusions, but I would be learn more about this phenomenon.</FONT></SPAN></P> <P><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk>--<SPAN class=078202800-19092000> <BR></SPAN></FONT><EM><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk>Paul A. Howes<BR></FONT></EM><A href="mailto:pahowes@fair-ware.com"><EM><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk>pahowes@fair-ware.com</FONT></EM></A></P> <P><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk></FONT> </P> <P><FONT face=NewCenturySchlbk></FONT> </P></BODY></HTML>help
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