Has anyone else had memory problems on this type of notebook (i.e. a Compal
TS30i2/3, aka. Dell Inspiron, aka. MidWest Micro SI, etc.). Specifically,
these are single bit errrors that occur during cpu/memory intensive operations.
I have tried 3 different RedHat version (5.1, 5.2, and a custom 6.0 with patches
to last Friday) and have been having the same types of errors with all of them.
The installation croaks 3 out of 4 times apparently due to a corrupted RAM disk
or file buffer, I get errors like "foo.rpm failed to install" or "unable to set
time zone /something...something/timezone does not exist". When it does appear
to install correctly, I still get errors when compiling. I usually can not get
more than 3 consecutive kernel compiles before running into an error. This
ranges anywhere from a C-preprocesor stumble on a file to a kernel oops that
quickly snowballs thru the system with further commands.
I have been able to isolate a number of the C compiler stumbles, copy out a
memory image and the affected file from buffer to the disk, reboot and find the
problem. In each case I was able to truly isolate, diff'ing the error file to
the original on the disk showed a single character, at somepoint in the file,
had changed by 1 bit in ASCII code. Grep'ing and extracting the file from the
memory image showed the same thing.
I have searched thru the several months of linux-kernel/development/laptop
lists and have not been able to find anything similar. Has anyone heard of a
similar problem? Has anyone heard of similar bugs in the kernel talking thru
chipsets? This is an Intel 82371 so I kind of doubt it.
Tired of tearing half my hair out debuging and the other half out fighting
with Quantex. They are reluctent since they basicly refuse to assume liabilty
if anything other than their default Win98 is installed and I can not recreate
errors under Win98. I ordered it without any software, though Win98 is
mandatory, so I have no way to test, atleast it runs the DVD ... for now.
Any comments (hey thats wierd, I had the same problem fixed it this way, IDIOT
<slap> your supposed to enable foo_option) would be greatly appreciated.
Linux junkie,
Adrian Jensen
