Hello all, I thought I'd introduce myself and my system. I've been lurking
on the list for a week or so, and thought I'd get a taste for what people's
problems have been and if they are related to mine. I've been running a
dual Celeron 466 with a BP6 and 320MB of RAM for a couple of months now. I
have been constantly been plagued with X crashing. I haven't ever
experienced a hard lock up with my system, unless it's something I've done
under my own (unknowing or knowing) will. Here's my system in more detail:
Abit BP6 Motherboard
Dual Celeron 466, never been OC'd, never plan to
Toshiba M1212 6x DVD/32x CDROM drive
Western Digital 6.4gig hard drive
320MB(two 128MB PC100 SDRAMs) of RAM
Matrox G400 32MB Dual Head video card
Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100 network card
Linksys PCI Combo card 10BT/10B2 network card
Hauppauge WinTV card
Cheap 100% Soundblaster compatible clone(cheap, works great in linux, $20)
SoundBlaster Live! Value [no driver module being used at this time]
ATX Case w/ 250W Powersupply
I've also got two 3" fans, at the front of the case, one at the top, one at
the bottom, blowing towards the back, and two 2" fans at the back, blowing
out of the case. I have also taken the heatsink off of the Matrox G400 and
put a TennMaxx fan on it. The case is currently open at this time.
About my operating system. I'm running RedHat 6.0 with extensive updates by
myself, with my own compiled 2.2.14 kernel with agpgart, dvd-ide, and udf
patches. My machine currently acts as the gateway machine for my roommate's
and I network connection. It's not under a very heavy load most of the time,
unless I'm compiling or playing games.
About my BIOS, etc. I have patched it with latest RELEASE patch from Abit
in an attempt to correct my problems, nothing seems to have changed, except,
I can't get into the HPT66 BIOS with Control-H(not using it, but I'd still
like to see what's in there, anyone know how to get in?). My settings are
pretty generic. I've got the CPUs set up for 466mhz at the defaults that
the BIOS provides for that speed. The rest of the settings are default BIOS,
except for turning APM totally off and turning NumLock on at boot. I've
never been much of a tweaker(breaks more than it helps).
Now, I hope I haven't forgotten anything, here's my problem. My computer
has NEVER hard locked while I was at it or away from it, it has always been
X crashing. A simple control-alt-delete will reboot it. I have also
discovered that the only time X crashes is when an OpenGL program goes wrong
or a bug is hit in Mesa/Utah-GLX, which is expected OR when I am NOT at my
computer, xscreensaver is running and the machine has a high load from one
of the screensavers OR I attempt to switch video modes after the computer
has been running some length of time. I have come to this conclusion because
my X doesn't crash while I'm at my computer, unless I do something to make
it crash and if I keep my xscreensaver running on "xroger"(skull and X
blinking randomly), it doesn't crash while I'm away either. This leads me
to believe it had something to do with the video card subsystem and/or X.
I, first, thought that it was the Utah-GLX module that was crashing the
machine, but I have run a couple weeks without it, and it still does the
same thing. I am quite stumped as to what could be causing this.
I haven't given up trying to discover what this problem is, however. My
system is stable enough and I know what NOT to do to keep X from crashing.
My next experiment is going to be to replace the motherboard and case. I'll
be putting the CPUs and everything in a Tyan Tiger 100 dual motherboard. I
will also be putting this motherboard in my case I have dubbed, "The Beast".
It's a huge 2' 1/2" long, 9" wide, and 2' 1" tall, steel, heavy duty, case
with a 300W powersupply with 2 fans on the powersupply blowing outward and
3 bigger fans, blowing in the case. This case retailed for around $900 5
years ago and I bought it from my company for $25 :) I wish I had a
manufacturer/model # but I don't :( The case and powersupply are made for
server type environments and should provide adequate power and cooling to
rule out any possible current/cooling culprits, if that is the case.
I will certainly keep the list updated on how things go, once I receive the
motherboard, which still hasn't arrived yet. If anyone would like more
info on my system or problems, don't hesitate to email me.
Ted
--
=- To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the -=
=- body of "unsubscribe linux-abit". -=
