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Date: Mon, 02 Dec 1996 13:09:02 -0800
From: James W Williams <williams@pixar.com>
Organization: Pixar Animation Studios
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CC: williams
Subject: FreeBSD chokes on 386 MB with WB cache.
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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