Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 12:55:59 -0700 (PDT) From: John Baldwin <jhb@pike.osd.bsdi.com> To: alpha@FreeBSD.org Subject: Problems with a PW500au Message-ID: <200008011955.MAA39698@pike.osd.bsdi.com>
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Hey gang, I have a PW500au here at work that I use to test patches on, etc. but I've been having problems with it recently. First, I've yet to get a video card that actually works properly in it. So far: 1) A full-length 32-bit PCI card: S3 Trio64V2/GX with an IBM DAC that came with the box. (This box started life as a 500a running AlphaBIOS and NT.) This card mostly worked. Occasionally when it booted (about 40% of the time), every character on the screen would be an upper-ascii star character. However, all the colors were ok. If I logged in as root and typed 'clear', the characters were ok, but the palette would then be randomly trashed. I.e., each time the palette chose a different set of 16 colors to use. Also, if I turned on moused, then moving the mouse would generate all sorts of screen corruption. The characters under the mouse cursor would change to garbage characters and colors, usually with a green background and all different foreground colors. After talking with dfr about my difficulties at Usenix, he suggested that a new video card might improve things. 2) S3 Virge GX, 32-bit PCI: This one was better in some areas and worse in others. The characters and color are fine with this card, however, it has other problems. During bootup, the kernel messages are printed with the SRM colors (white on blue) rather than grey on black as the other alpha's running BSD do. Also, the startup messages during /etc/rc are also in SRM colors. Once getty starts up on ttyv0, it scrolls up the screen until the last line of the kernel boot message is the last line on the screen, and then changes to grey on black colors and prints a login line over top of the bottom three lines of the screen. If I login, it works ok from here. However, one odd thing is that when the sc0 driver is probed during the kernel boot, a blinking hardware cursor shows up in lower left-hand corner of the screen and stays there permamently. In multiuser mode there is a separeate non-blinking software cursor that works properly. Also, with this card I can't get a usable console in single user mode. If fsck fails during boot, for example, it will get to the 'Press enter for /bin/sh:' prompt (curiously the blinking hardware cursor is in the right place at the prompt), but pressing enter doesn't generate any response. Also, if I use shutdown to enter single user mode, I get the same behavior. 3) S3 Trio64 (Diamond Stealth 64) PCI 32-bit: No SRM video at all during bootup. 4) S3 #9 GXE64 PCI 32-bit: Same as 3). I haven't manually turned on serial console, but perhaps it has conveniently switched it on for me. *sigh* My second issue is that it seems to die during high load, i.e. when building world, or compiling X or Xemacs. It will simply die and drop into SRM with kernel stack invalid halt PC = 0xffffXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX -- HWPRB invalid. It then has to be cold-booted to be usable again. Any help or suggestions appreciated. -- John Baldwin <jhb@bsdi.com> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ PGP Key: http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/pgpkey.asc "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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