On 5/2/99 15:19, INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>On Sun, 02 May 1999, T. Sean (Theo) Schulze wrote:
>> About a week and a half ago, I came home to find my screen filled with
>> looked like memory stack dump. At the bottom of the screen were a couple
>> of lines of text that read (loosely): "Aaiee...tried to kill the idle
>> task!" and "Kernel panic...killing the interrupt handler." I have been
>> working this problem on and off ever since then, and still don't have it
>> solved. The machine is one I assembled from bits, and it is/was running
>> SuSE Linux 6.0 with kernel 2.2.1. It had 40MB of RAM, but while
>> troubleshooting, I found that one of my SIMMs was not getting reported as
>> EDO and so I swapped it and its complement out. The box now has 32MB
>> RAM. The video card is a generic S3 VirGE/DX with 8(?)MB and 170MHz
>> RAMDAC. The monitor is a Cornerstone 45/101nf 19".
>>
>[rest of the email deleted to conserve bandwidth]
>
>Hm... It really sounds like you've got some buggy hardware somewhere. I can
>see Kernel 2.0.36 giving an oops, because it's handling of certain
>hardware was
>(only slightly) buggy. But the 2.2.x series is very stable. 2.2.x should
>not
>be giving that type of error on your system.
>
Upon further reflection, I remembered that the emergency disks are all
2.0.36. But, again, those weren't the ones giving me the oops. I never
got far enough with a boot on those for an oops. As soon as they tried
to set the vga mode, it triggered a reboot.
>And if you're getting it with these boot disks, then there is most
>definately a
>problem. Why don't you send us a COMPLETE list of your hardware, i.e.,
>motherboard, brand and type of RAM, brand and size of HD, brand of Video Card
>(just the chipset won't do), Sound Board, all IDE or SCSI devices, and all of
>the rest of the hardware.
>
>Also, try to give the addresses and interrupts for the hardware that you
>know.
>
>It's very possible that there's a hardware conflict somewhere in your system,
>but who knows for sure...
>
Frank's suspicion that it isn't my video card has been confirmed. I
swapped the card to a different slot, changed the monitor it was attached
to (down to a 15" Packard-Bell), and swapped the card out with another
card, but I still have the problem. In fact, the problem has gotten
worse. As I have been troubleshooting, it has seemed to me that the BIOS
is taking varying periods of time to list the drives it finds.
Also now, it won't even attempt to run through the BIOS startup. Either
the screen remains black (and the monitor's power light goes from green
to amber), or the monitor shows an 8x8 grid pattern, with the center
sixteen squares alternating with the outer squares from dark to light.
Before that happened, lilo would only get to "L". An attempt at a start
with tomsrtbt ended with only "LIL" showing, and a further attempt with
the SuSE emergency disk didn't even get to the BIOS display. After a
complete swap of the RAM, when I hit the power switch, all I get is the
8x8 grid on the monitor and only brief drive spin up noises.
The motherboard I am using is a MB-8500TVX. I am not clear on who makes
it, but there is a good description of it at
http://www.intercall.net/~rbmnj/tech/mbs/8500tvx.html
The processor I am using is an AMD K6 200MHz. I have just notice that on
the web page I mentioned above, it says that this board experiences
overheating problems with the AMD K6 200. I wonder if my processor has
been cooked? I have an old Cyrix 6x86 90+ here; I might slap that in
there and see what I get.
So far though, using the swap outs to eliminate possible sources of the
problem, I am certain that it is not my video card(s) or the RAM. It
also can't be the drive (a Western Digital Caviar 32500) since tomsrtbt
and the other disks are hanging/crashing before they even try to read the
hard drive.
Cheers,
Sean
Theo. Sean Schulze
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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