From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 7 00:18:37 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6060116A4CE for ; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:18:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from gw.catspoiler.org (217-ip-163.nccn.net [209.79.217.163]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D41D943D45 for ; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:18:33 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from truckman@FreeBSD.org) Received: from FreeBSD.org (mousie.catspoiler.org [192.168.101.2]) by gw.catspoiler.org (8.12.9p2/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i078IF7E015950; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:18:18 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from truckman@FreeBSD.org) Message-Id: <200401070818.i078IF7E015950@gw.catspoiler.org> Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:18:14 -0800 (PST) From: Don Lewis To: doconnor@gsoft.com.au In-Reply-To: <200401071731.40481.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=us-ascii cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org cc: yurtesen@ispro.net.tr Subject: Re: FreeBSD Crashes with AMD X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 08:18:37 -0000 On 7 Jan, Daniel O'Connor wrote: > On Wednesday 07 January 2004 16:44, Bakul Shah wrote: >> > ECC RAM is nice, but it is considerably more expensive (especially when >> > you consider you need to buy 'server' motherboards to use it), and it can >> > get undetectable faults too :) >> >> This is not as bad as it used to be. From compugeeks: >> 512MB DDR PC3200 ECC : $86.50 >> 512MB DDR PC3200 : $65.50 >> For 64 bit memory ECC is as cheap as parity. >> >> There are quite a few motherboards that 'support' ECC. See >> for example, >> http://www.anime.net/~goemon/linux-ecc/ >> Though, not all are built well enough. > > Hmm, well I am very suprised to see the Via VT400 in there - I can't see > anything on the spec page for it that says it supports ECC, and the manual > for the KT400 board doesn't say explicitly that ECC is supported. Back when Via allowed mere mortals to download their chipset manuals, I looked at the KT266, KT333 and/or KT400 manuals and they seemed to claim ECC support. I never found any motherboards using these chipsets that supported ECC RAM. These days the tech support links on their chipset pages lead to pages full of press releases. I think Via only releases chipset manuals to their "partners" these days. About the only Athlon XP motherboards that I've found that support ECC use the AMD-761 chipset. Unfortunately these don't support the newer Athlon XPs and they seem to be disappearing from the market. They ones that are left are really inexpensive, though. The Gigabyte GA7-DX+ I bought about a year or so ago was very reasonably priced at the time and performs well. My suspicion is that the recent lack of ECC support may be due to AMD wanting to move "serious" users over to their new 64 bit architecture. >> FreeBSD *needs* to have ECC since it is already such a >> reliable OS -- you don't want your uptime spoiled by a memory >> failure, do you?:-) > > It would be nice, but there are patches out there, grab them, clean them up > and submit them :) Pointers?