Date: Mon, 02 Dec 1996 13:09:02 -0800 From: James W Williams <williams@pixar.com> To: hardware@freebsd.org Cc: williams Subject: FreeBSD chokes on 386 MB with WB cache. Message-ID: <32A3456E.41C6@pixar.com>
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I have a small computer with a 386DX-40 noname motherboard, with Cyrix cpu, that I attempted to install FreeBSD 2.1.6 on recently. The manual claims it to have write back cache (128K), but the ctcm cache checking program doesn't run properly on it, so I've not confirmed this. Anyway, when I tried to run the FreeBSD install, it always eventually panicked. Before the panic, I'd get trashed displays when viewing the various screens of the installation program. I tried turning off the cache and it worked much better, but did eventually fail. This is not my main FreeBSD box, I was doing this mostly for fun, so it isn't critical to get it working. I'm mostly curious if you guys have found broken cache implementations out there that produce results similar to this. I'm also curious why I don't seem to have trouble with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on this machine. A broken cache should hurt Windows too, shouldn't it? For fun, I tried installing plan 9, which failed. I also tried FreeBSD 2.1.6 on a _really_ cheap motherboard I got at Weirdstuff Warehouse that uses a UMC clone of the 486SX-33 (which I recently discovered violates Intel patents and can't be sold in the US...) This is the most bizarre intel clone chip I've ever seen. Most of my DOS based testing programs can't cope with it and claim it's running at 48MHz, 88Mhz, 300Mhz, or whatever. But FreeBSD seemed to like it just fine! I didn't do a full install, just fiddled with the boot floppy, but at least it didn't crash like the 386 did! I'm not on this list, so please direct any responses to the address below. Thanks! Jim ----------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Williams Pixar Animation Studios williams@pixar.com Richmond, CA
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