From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Oct 25 12:33:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id MAA17653 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 12:33:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from isgate.is (isgate.is [193.4.58.51]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA17642 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 12:33:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from totii@est.is) Received: from eh.est.is (eh.est.is [194.144.208.34]) by isgate.is (8.7.5-M/) with ESMTP id TAA29704; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 19:32:23 GMT Received: from didda.est.is (totii@ppp-22.est.is [194.144.208.122]) by eh.est.is (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id TAA20876; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 19:30:53 GMT Message-ID: <34524948.41C67EA6@est.is> Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 19:32:24 +0000 From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=DEor=F0ur?= Ivarsson X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Jamil J. Weatherbee" CC: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Parity Ram References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jamil J. Weatherbee wrote: > > Can someone fill me in on when you would want to use parity ram as opposed > to non-parity ram these days? If there was some anomaly in memory how > would freebsd handle it (is there a trap for parity error?) As far as I know, the 'parity check fail' is connected to NMI of CPU. In most cases the BIOS rutines accept this and halt the computer with no information on where or why , only something like 'NMI detected, system halted' or 'Memory parity fail - NMI generated , system halted'. The only reason for this might be giving you some warning of failed memory rather than failed software. This has helped me several times when I was suspecting broken memory in the old days (90-93) :-) Thordur Ivarsson