Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 08:38:23PM -0400, Chad Leigh -- Shire. Net LLC wrote: On Thursday, May 30, 2002, at 08:31 , Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. Not necesarily. What video card did you have. Is it on the supported list for xfree? Is it on the well supported list or the take-your-chances list? Was your kernel and or xfree compiled with AMD optimizations turned on in gcc? Lots of questions can be asked. GeForce 2 MX 200 CPU_TYPE = k7 I have some servers running Athlon XP 1800+ processors and the kernel was compiled with -march=k6 since I specified a k7 processor in the make.conf. The machines would hang every few days. Once I recompiled the kernel with no -march flag (just straight x86) I have not had a problem (so far, knock on wood). I do not know where it was hanging up, since the machines are 4000km away from me right now, but they have not had a problem since I did that -- maybe you have a similar issue? Thanks for the tip, I'll try it. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
Someone mentioned this MTRR problem earlier, I even tried a patch but it was unsuccessful. I think I'll make a new try with FreeBSD 4.6, maybe things will be more successful then. On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 05:53:07PM -0700, Jordan K Hubbard wrote: I'll bet you wouldn't have any trouble running -stable on it. There was a problem with MTRR support which still needs a little fixing in order to shut down properly but that's nowhere near as bad as X not running. Fix should be in FreeBSD 4.6 as well. - Jordan On Thursday, May 30, 2002, at 17:31 US/Pacific, Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 09:16:25PM -0400, Scott wrote: At 10:26 2002/05/31 +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: On Friday, 31 May 2002 at 2:31:32 +0200, Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. Out of curiosity, is it an ASUS MB? There was a problem with some ASUS boards and X, which has been fixed--that is, if you do a cvsup, make world and recompile the kernel, X will work. Yes, Asus A7V333.. was this fix added to the stable tree? If that was the problem well, then you could say the problem ~was~ with FreeBSD, but--it's been fixed. :) I hope so. :-) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 05:24:38PM -0400, Scott Robbins wrote: On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 10:17:57PM +0200, Morsal Rodbay wrote: Someone mentioned this MTRR problem earlier, I even tried a patch but it was unsuccessful. I think I'll make a new try with FreeBSD 4.6, maybe things will be more successful then. The particular problem seems to be with some (not all) ASUS boards. I had the problem and it has been fixed with 4.6 Glad to hear that, going to install 4.6 soon. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Thursday, May 30, 2002, at 08:31 , Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. Not necesarily. What video card did you have. Is it on the supported list for xfree? Is it on the well supported list or the take-your-chances list? Was your kernel and or xfree compiled with AMD optimizations turned on in gcc? Lots of questions can be asked. I have some servers running Athlon XP 1800+ processors and the kernel was compiled with -march=k6 since I specified a k7 processor in the make.conf. The machines would hang every few days. Once I recompiled the kernel with no -march flag (just straight x86) I have not had a problem (so far, knock on wood). I do not know where it was hanging up, since the machines are 4000km away from me right now, but they have not had a problem since I did that -- maybe you have a similar issue? best Chad To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. It's probably _not_ a FreeBSD issue. I'm running -stable on a dual AMD MP 1800+ system (Tyan 2466 motherboard), running XFree86 on a Radeon 8500 128MB card. No problems at all. And it screams. :-) -- Frank Mayhar [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.exit.com/ Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Thu, 2002-05-30 at 19:31, Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. What video card/chip? Without this it's really hard to tell. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message -- Larry Rosenman http://www.lerctr.org/~ler Phone: +1 972-414-9812 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] US Mail: 1905 Steamboat Springs Drive, Garland, TX 75044-6749 To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
I'll bet you wouldn't have any trouble running -stable on it. There was a problem with MTRR support which still needs a little fixing in order to shut down properly but that's nowhere near as bad as X not running. Fix should be in FreeBSD 4.6 as well. - Jordan On Thursday, May 30, 2002, at 17:31 US/Pacific, Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Friday, 31 May 2002 at 2:31:32 +0200, Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. This is rather simplistic logic. Firstly, it could be a hardware problem which Microsoft doesn't tickle. It could be any of a number of things. From this viewpoint, I'd say that the problem is you: you don't even say what happens. We can't debug like that. FWIW, I am running dual-headed X on an Athlon 1700+ based system. I've had no problems with X at all. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. There's a known problem with some of these processors; we discuss this every time someone with a lot of RAM uses an AGP card on one of these boxes, and doesn't use DISABLE_PSE. See the latest Linux release notes for details, if you aren't willing to run FreeBSD-STABLE, and install X from /usr/ports. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
At 10:26 2002/05/31 +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: On Friday, 31 May 2002 at 2:31:32 +0200, Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. Out of curiosity, is it an ASUS MB? There was a problem with some ASUS boards and X, which has been fixed--that is, if you do a cvsup, make world and recompile the kernel, X will work. If that was the problem well, then you could say the problem ~was~ with FreeBSD, but--it's been fixed. :) Scott Robbins To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
Jordan K Hubbard wrote: I'll bet you wouldn't have any trouble running -stable on it. There was a problem with MTRR support which still needs a little fixing in order to shut down properly but that's nowhere near as bad as X not running. Fix should be in FreeBSD 4.6 as well. The MTRR issue you're referring to, is this related to the one in the AMD errata docs about SMM TSEG and large page mappings? Which CPUs does this bug affect? Is it AMD specific at all? To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
I haven't read the AMD errata docs so I can't comment on that, but it appears to be an issue with AMD CPUs and certain support chipsets, I believe the early VIAs. Reading the cvs logs for the MTRR support code will certainly yield more detailed information (and author attribution) than I've provided. In fact, here, I'll simply do it for you. :-) RCS file: /home/ncvs/src/sys/i386/i386/i686_mem.c,v Working file: i686_mem.c head: 1.14 revision 1.14 date: 2002/04/14 20:13:08; author: dwmalone; state: Exp; lines: +53 -32 Make the MTRR code a bit more defensive - this should help people trying to run X on some Athlon systems where the BIOS does odd things (mines an ASUS A7A266, but it seems to also help on other systems). Here's a description of the problem and my fix: The problem with the old MTRR code is that it only expects to find documented values in the bytes of MTRR registers. To convert the MTRR byte into a FreeBSD Memory Range Type (mrt) it uses the byte value and looks it up in an array. If the value is not in range then the mrt value ends up containing random junk. This isn't an immediate problem. The mrt value is only used later when rewriting the MTRR registers. When we finally go to write a value back again, the function i686_mtrrtype() searches for the junk value and returns -1 when it fails to find it. This is converted to a byte (0xff) and written back to the register, causing a GPF as 0xff is an illegal value for a MTRR byte. To work around this problem I've added a new mrt flag MDF_UNKNOWN. We set this when we read a MTRR byte which we do not understand. If we try to convert a MDF_UNKNOWN back into a MTRR value, then the new function, i686_mrt2mtrr, just returns the old value of the MTRR byte. This leaves the memory range type unchanged. I'd like to merge this before the 4.6 code freeze, so if people can test this with XFree 4 that would be very useful. PR: 28418, 25958 Tested by: jkh, Christopher Masto [EMAIL PROTECTED] MFC after: 2 weeks - Jordan On Thursday, May 30, 2002, at 06:41PM, Darren Pilgrim wrote: Jordan K Hubbard wrote: I'll bet you wouldn't have any trouble running -stable on it. There was a problem with MTRR support which still needs a little fixing in order to shut down properly but that's nowhere near as bad as X not running. Fix should be in FreeBSD 4.6 as well. The MTRR issue you're referring to, is this related to the one in the AMD errata docs about SMM TSEG and large page mappings? Which CPUs does this bug affect? Is it AMD specific at all? -- Jordan K. Hubbard Engineering Manager, BSD technology group Apple Computer To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
Frank Mayhar writes: Morsal Rodbay wrote: I recenetly bought an Athlon XP 1800+... and it turned out that it wouldnt run XFree. Everything worked well besides X. Since a workstation without X is useless I was forced to switch to WinXP and it's very stable so there is nothing wrong with the hardware which means it's a FreeBSD issue. It's probably _not_ a FreeBSD issue. I'm running -stable on a dual AMD MP 1800+ system (Tyan 2466 motherboard), running XFree86 on a Radeon 8500 128MB card. No problems at all. And it screams. :-) ???!!! Please! I have a lot of troubles with Tyan 2466! Are you ising onboard ethernet? My system hangs immediatly when try ifconfig. Can you boot with SCSI controller? I change this mobo for a singleprocessor one but want to try more. I try UP STABLE kernels from 15-Feb-2002 to about 10-May-2002. -- @BABOLO http://links.ru/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
RE: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
Greg, One question... are you using the latest mobo BIOS? My friend purchased that board and threw a 1.2GHz TBird in it. It was quite unstable until he upgraded the BIOS. When I purchased my board, it was the 1st thing I did and I haven't have any trouble with it yet. I've got a 1.1GHz and 3 128MB PC133 (mixed brands on top of it all) DIMMs in there. Lots-o-ATA devices, and I'm currently running 4.4-STABLE. The box is solid as a rock, have yet to cause it to panic/crash/etc... --Chris -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Greg Lehey Sent: Friday, December 28, 2001 2:40 AM To: FreeBSD Questions; FreeBSD Hackers Subject: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors? I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' Just for the fun of it, I tried running Linux on it. I've been running a kernel build and 'make clean' on it now for 36 hours, and it's still running fine. Yesterday some Linux friends of mine came around and looked at it and told me that the Linux kernel I was running on the machine (2.4.16) had had a number of AMD-specific fixes put in. He didn't go into more detail, unfortunately, but I'll ask him again when I have time: it could be something relating to chipset bugs we have seen and fixed. It would help to know, though, if other people are experiencing similar problems. Please let me know if you're having problems with AMD processors which seem to be specific to FreeBSD, especially if they're hangs (i.e. the machine stops reacting, but the display still shows the last state, it doesn't reboot or panic). Information that could be interesting is (here my values): Processor:AMD Duron 850 Motherboard: ECS K7VZA Memory: 1 128 MB SIMM, 100 MHz. Greg -- For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 06:10:09PM +1030, Greg Lehey stood up and spoke: I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' Using a Duron processor, it is likely that you have the 686B as a Southbridge. I've read a little about the problem with that Southbridge yesterday, and indeed, the machine locking up is one thing that has been reported in conjunction with that chip (although the information on most websites deal with the bahavior of the Southbridge under Windows...) Another thing I read is that for a short time, VIA obviously shipped a few faulty Southbridges that would not work properly except if their core voltage gets increased by avout 0.5 V or something. It's been said that these chips were only sold to OEMs and not landed in boards that were actually sold to customers directly, but who knows! Generally, I've also been using AMD for many years. I think their processors are quite good, but the folks making the chipsets and mainboards are - well - sometimes plain idiots. A lot of stories about problems with Socket A boards can be found all over the web. Here's what I've been through earlier this year: I bought an AMD Athlon 1000 Mhz and a Chaintech board. After assembling the stuff, it just didn't work. Nothing. So I went to the place of purchase and got my mainboard replaced (I kept the CPU). After reassembling my machine with the new board, it *would* work, but after three hours, it would suddenly reboot, and then reboot over and over again when the BIOS passes control to the operating system. After three such reboots, I turned the machine off, and were not able to turn it on again. It just sat there, totally dead. I then got my board exchanged a second time, and the new board's been running fine ever since then. Now, I have found a lot of similar stories on the web. I guess some mainboard manufacturer's (and even VIA as a chipset manufacturer) seem to care very little about quality assurance. That's actually sad: AMD's best processors aren't worth a dime if the components they depend on are cheap crap. As a side note: I have bought numeros board from Epox and never had a single problem with them, so in my opionion, Epox (together with ASUS) is probably one of the companies I would recommend people to buy boards from, but Chaintech and other cheapies should probably be avoided... Greetings Nils -- Nils Holland Ti Systems - FreeBSD in Tiddische, Germany http://www.tisys.org * [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
It seems Greg Lehey wrote: Information that could be interesting is (here my values): Processor:AMD Duron 850 Motherboard: ECS K7VZA Memory: 1 128 MB SIMM, 100 MHz. What FreeBSD version are you using ? I have put a fix for the 686b southbridge bug in -current, but it is not in -stable yet... -Søren To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 06:10:09PM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' What I noticed for socketA boards is that they tend to be extremely picky about the memory you feed them. And this is not an ElCheapo mainboard, this is an Asus. Asus is my experience has good mainboards. All sorts of weird crashes, sometimes only after hours of buildworld-stress testing. Keeping everything else the same but swapping the memory solved the issue once and for all. Really weird. Wilko -- | / o / /_ _ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |/|/ / / /( (_) Bulte Arnhem, The Netherlands To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, 28 Dec 2001 11:57:44 +0100, Nils Holland wrote: Now, I have found a lot of similar stories on the web. I guess some mainboard manufacturer's (and even VIA as a chipset manufacturer) seem to care very little about quality assurance. That's actually sad: AMD's best processors aren't worth a dime if the components they depend on are cheap crap. As a side note: I have bought numeros board from Epox and never had a single problem with them, so in my opionion, Epox (together with ASUS) is probably one of the companies I would recommend people to buy boards from, but Chaintech and other cheapies should probably be avoided... abit has been extremely good to me. even windows 98 doesn't crash on it i have the abit kt7a with a 1gHz socket a athlon. I don't like Soyo, FICS, and a bunch of others i cant think of --- doug reynolds | the maverick | [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Public Key Fingerprint: 6E7B 9993 B503 6D45 E33A 2019 26E5 C1DB To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
Greg, Do not forget to check your power supply make/model. If you search on google for AMD's recommended hardware list, double check you're power supply is listed for your cpu. I had the unfortunate experience of having a power supply explode and catch on fire, because I read the model number wrong and thought it was OK for a new 1.4GHz Athlon. The symptoms: system unstable/freezing under no load. Under load, the power supply exploded. hehe -Keith On 28-Dec-2001, Greg Lehey wrote: I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' Just for the fun of it, I tried running Linux on it. I've been running a kernel build and 'make clean' on it now for 36 hours, and it's still running fine. Yesterday some Linux friends of mine came around and looked at it and told me that the Linux kernel I was running on the machine (2.4.16) had had a number of AMD-specific fixes put in. He didn't go into more detail, unfortunately, but I'll ask him again when I have time: it could be something relating to chipset bugs we have seen and fixed. It would help to know, though, if other people are experiencing similar problems. Please let me know if you're having problems with AMD processors which seem to be specific to FreeBSD, especially if they're hangs (i.e. the machine stops reacting, but the display still shows the last state, it doesn't reboot or panic). Information that could be interesting is (here my values): Processor:AMD Duron 850 Motherboard: ECS K7VZA Memory: 1 128 MB SIMM, 100 MHz. Greg -- For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 06:10:09PM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' Just for the fun of it, I tried running Linux on it. I've been running a kernel build and 'make clean' on it now for 36 hours, and it's still running fine. Yesterday some Linux friends of mine came around and looked at it and told me that the Linux kernel I was running on the machine (2.4.16) had had a number of AMD-specific fixes put in. He didn't go into more detail, unfortunately, but I'll ask him again when I have time: it could be something relating to chipset bugs we have seen and fixed. It would help to know, though, if other people are experiencing similar problems. Please let me know if you're having problems with AMD processors which seem to be specific to FreeBSD, especially if they're hangs (i.e. the machine stops reacting, but the display still shows the last state, it doesn't reboot or panic). I have had this exact problem. I have an Epox 8KTA board with a 1GHz Athlon (Thunderbird) with 256MB of PC-133 memory. I would consistently get random errors, usually during a compilation, using the default BIOS settings. After fiddling with some of the BIOS options, such as enabling PCI burst, the system runs pretty stable. However, occasionally I will get that freeze that you refer to during a buildworld. As far as I can tell though if I set the memory clock to 100MHz the problem goes away completely, or at least I have not observed it happen yet. It is really hard for me to say if this is FreeBSD specific because I do not tend to stress the system much when I have Linux running. My wife has an identical system running Windows 98SE and she has no problems but I know that I have installed software from Epox that specifically addresses some issues with the VIA chipset so that may be why. -- Glenn Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 06:10:09PM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' I'm running an AMD Thunderbird 1200 on an ECS-K7S5A (SiS 735 chipset), with 256 MB DDR SDRAM installed. I experience random reboots with that system, though I have had a few people on -questions tell me to make sure my cards are properly seated as the ECS boards seem to be very picky about that (I still don't believe that is the reason). I'm going to check out the RAM later today, but I'm not really sure what is wrong with that machine. My first two AMD machines, a K6-2 350 on as ASUS-P5A and a Duron 800 on an ASUS-A7V will just freeze after booting and showing the login prompt (this happens around once every ten boots or so). No problmes under Windows. A friend of mine running the same motherboard with WinXP also experiences random reboots though, so I'm hoping a BIOS update might work some magic, though the fixes list doesn't hint at this. Most other people I've talked to consider their ECS boards rock-solid. Just for the fun of it, I tried running Linux on it. I've been Didn't do that, wouldn't know if the problems also exist under Linux. Anyway, that was my experience. The ATA100 controller on the board is only recognized as an ATA33 controller, but I'll be sending Soeren whatever he needs shortly in hope of fixing that. If anyone has even a hint as to what else could be causing these reboots, I'd very much appreciate it (-questions didn't really come up with much). And before I forget, the machine is running 4.4-STABLE. -- -Munish To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
Munish Chopra wrote: On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 06:10:09PM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' I'm running an AMD Thunderbird 1200 on an ECS-K7S5A (SiS 735 chipset), with 256 MB DDR SDRAM installed. I experience random reboots with that system, though I have had a few people on -questions tell me to make sure my cards are properly seated as the ECS boards seem to be very picky about that (I still don't believe that is the reason). I'm going to check out the RAM later today, but I'm not really sure what is wrong with that machine. My first two AMD machines, a K6-2 350 on as ASUS-P5A and a Duron 800 on an ASUS-A7V will just freeze after booting and showing the login prompt (this happens around once every ten boots or so). No problmes under Windows. A friend of mine running the same motherboard with WinXP also experiences random reboots though, so I'm hoping a BIOS update might work some magic, though the fixes list doesn't hint at this. Most other people I've talked to consider their ECS boards rock-solid. Just for the fun of it, I tried running Linux on it. I've been Didn't do that, wouldn't know if the problems also exist under Linux. Anyway, that was my experience. The ATA100 controller on the board is only recognized as an ATA33 controller, but I'll be sending Soeren whatever he needs shortly in hope of fixing that. He already has code to recognize the SiS-735 chipset and many more SiS versions in -current. They just haven't been MFC'ed. Look for 55131039 in ata-pci.c and ata-dma.c. Kent If anyone has even a hint as to what else could be causing these reboots, I'd very much appreciate it (-questions didn't really come up with much). And before I forget, the machine is running 4.4-STABLE. -- Kent Stewart Richland, WA mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html FreeBSD News http://daily.daemonnews.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 02:46:12PM -0600, Glenn Johnson stood up and spoke: As far as I can tell though if I set the memory clock to 100MHz the problem goes away completely, or at least I have not observed it happen yet. So it's PC133 RAM but only works properly at 100 Mhz? Well, I guess I have seen the same problem: I once had a system with a front side bus of 100 Mhz, and I could set the RAM clock to either host clock or host click + 33 Mhz. Now, I choose the second method, because according to my calculation, a host clock of 100 Mhz plus an additional 33 Mhz are 133 Mhz, and thus just what my PC133 RAM wants. However, the system would run less than reliable with this setting, so I later set the RAM clock to host clock, so 100 Mhz. I no longer own that system - I had these problems back in June... Anyway, for most memory problems, I have found the tool memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com) to be a good test. While, as far as I have heard, this utility does not detect *all* possible errors, it has often been able to give me good insight of the stability of my RAM and overall system. Greetings Nils -- Nils Holland Ti Systems - FreeBSD in Tiddische, Germany http://www.tisys.org * [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
It seems Glenn Johnson wrote: I have had this exact problem. I have an Epox 8KTA board with a 1GHz Athlon (Thunderbird) with 256MB of PC-133 memory. I would consistently get random errors, usually during a compilation, using the default BIOS settings. After fiddling with some of the BIOS options, such as enabling PCI burst, the system runs pretty stable. However, occasionally I will get that freeze that you refer to during a buildworld. As far as I can tell though if I set the memory clock to 100MHz the problem goes away completely, or at least I have not observed it happen yet. I have a 8kta3+ here that has problems with some of the PC133 512Mb modules I got cheaply earlier this year, the problem was solved when I swithed of page mode in the BIOS, it then runs 100% stable even overclocked at 145Mhz and CAS2 which the modules shouldn't even support. It is really hard for me to say if this is FreeBSD specific because I do not tend to stress the system much when I have Linux running. My wife has an identical system running Windows 98SE and she has no problems but I know that I have installed software from Epox that specifically addresses some issues with the VIA chipset so that may be why. From what I can tell the newest Epox BIOS for the 8kta3 does *not* install the 686b fix when it doesn't detect a SBLive! sound card, nice but not good enough :/ -Søren To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 11:12:40PM +0100, Søren Schmidt stood up and spoke: From what I can tell the newest Epox BIOS for the 8kta3 does *not* install the 686b fix when it doesn't detect a SBLive! sound card, nice but not good enough :/ There are many information on the 686B bug available on the net, and looking at all of them and trying to draw some conclusions isn't going to work, as much of the information that can be found is conflicting. Actually, I just read an article that revisited the 686B in August, a few months after the fix was released. They claim that they were *only* able to produce the problem with a SBLive, but not without. Other reports, and that is the most widely adopted belief, is that the bug can also occur without the SBLive. Other reports I read claim to have found similar problems in the MVP3 chipset, as used in a lot of K6-2 systems. According to these articles, the 686B is only the latest member of a family of flawed chipsets. More or less randomly, I got about a mailing list post where multiple Linux users reported data corruption with the MVP3. But back to the 686B: I don't know what Linux is currently doing about the bug, but for some time after the problem was discovered, it seems as if they simply turned DMA off (a miling list post on this topic said: ...and now all these high-performance Athlon systems are going to run in 1992 PIO mode by default). Well, I guess all of this may well be a little confusing ;-) Greetings Nils -- Nils Holland Ti Systems - FreeBSD in Tiddische, Germany http://www.tisys.org * [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 02:46:12PM -0600, Glenn Johnson wrote: On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 06:10:09PM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' Just for the fun of it, I tried running Linux on it. I've been running a kernel build and 'make clean' on it now for 36 hours, and it's still running fine. Yesterday some Linux friends of mine came around and looked at it and told me that the Linux kernel I was running on the machine (2.4.16) had had a number of AMD-specific fixes put in. He didn't go into more detail, unfortunately, but I'll ask him again when I have time: it could be something relating to chipset bugs we have seen and fixed. It would help to know, though, if other people are experiencing similar problems. Please let me know if you're having problems with AMD processors which seem to be specific to FreeBSD, especially if they're hangs (i.e. the machine stops reacting, but the display still shows the last state, it doesn't reboot or panic). I have had this exact problem. I have an Epox 8KTA board with a 1GHz Athlon (Thunderbird) with 256MB of PC-133 memory. I would consistently get random errors, usually during a compilation, using the default BIOS settings. After fiddling with some of the BIOS options, such as enabling PCI burst, the system runs pretty stable. However, occasionally I will get that freeze that you refer to during a buildworld. As far as I can tell though if I set the memory clock to 100MHz the problem goes away completely, or at least I have not observed it happen yet. Another thing that struck my mind that bit me once: byte merging or write combine (I forgot the right phrase the bios setup used) was rather fatal for the stability of the machine. Wilko -- | / o / /_ _ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |/|/ / / /( (_) Bulte Arnhem, The Netherlands To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 11:12:40PM +0100, Søren Schmidt wrote: It seems Glenn Johnson wrote: I have had this exact problem. I have an Epox 8KTA board with a 1GHz Athlon (Thunderbird) with 256MB of PC-133 memory. I would consistently get random errors, usually during a compilation, using the default BIOS settings. After fiddling with some of the BIOS options, such as enabling PCI burst, the system runs pretty stable. However, occasionally I will get that freeze that you refer to during a buildworld. As far as I can tell though if I set the memory clock to 100MHz the problem goes away completely, or at least I have not observed it happen yet. I have a 8kta3+ here that has problems with some of the PC133 512Mb modules I got cheaply earlier this year, the problem was solved when I swithed of page mode in the BIOS, it then runs 100% stable even overclocked at 145Mhz and CAS2 which the modules shouldn't even support. Thanks, I will give that a try. It is really hard for me to say if this is FreeBSD specific because I do not tend to stress the system much when I have Linux running. My wife has an identical system running Windows 98SE and she has no problems but I know that I have installed software from Epox that specifically addresses some issues with the VIA chipset so that may be why. From what I can tell the newest Epox BIOS for the 8kta3 does *not* install the 686b fix when it doesn't detect a SBLive! sound card, nice but not good enough :/ Yes, that seems to be the case. I just checked the Epox Web site and the BIOS revision of 04/17/2001 for the 8KTA has the following bullet point: * Fixed VIA KT133/A/E + 686B issue copying large sized files on * E/IDE devices with a SB Live sound card installed. No further mention of the issue is made for later BIOS revisions. For the software I referred to above, I was referring to Windows software that includes fixes for the OS drivers. They call it VIA Apollo 4-in-1 (a.k.a. VIA ServicePack). I am not really up on Windows behavior but my impression was that this software was necessary to enable UDMA. -- Glenn Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Fri, 28 Dec 2001 22:47:58 +0100, Nils Holland wrote: On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 02:46:12PM -0600, Glenn Johnson stood up and spoke: As far as I can tell though if I set the memory clock to 100MHz the problem goes away completely, or at least I have not observed it happen yet. So it's PC133 RAM but only works properly at 100 Mhz? Well, I guess I have seen the same problem: I once had a system with a front side bus of 100 Mhz, and I could set the RAM clock to either host clock or host click + 33 Mhz. Now, I choose the second method, because according to my calculation, a host clock of 100 Mhz plus an additional 33 Mhz are 133 Mhz, and thus just what my PC133 RAM wants. However, the system would run less than reliable with this setting, so I later set the RAM clock to host clock, so 100 Mhz. I no longer own that system - I had these problems back in June... Anyway, for most memory problems, I have found the tool memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com) to be a good test. While, as far as I have heard, this utility does not detect *all* possible errors, it has often been able to give me good insight of the stability of my RAM and overall system. I know back in the days when PC100 was new and the prices came down a little bit, but still really expensive, a few manufactures pirated a lot of PC66 and made some changes to have it work like PC100. but it wasn't stable. maybe people are doing that with pc133.. it wouldnt surprise me. --- doug reynolds | the maverick | [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Public Key Fingerprint: 6E7B 9993 B503 6D45 E33A 2019 26E5 C1DB To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Friday, 28 December 2001 at 13:23:50 +0100, Søren Schmidt wrote: It seems Greg Lehey wrote: Information that could be interesting is (here my values): Processor:AMD Duron 850 Motherboard: ECS K7VZA Memory:1 128 MB SIMM, 100 MHz. What FreeBSD version are you using ? I have put a fix for the 686b southbridge bug in -current, but it is not in -stable yet... Hmm, this is 4-STABLE. Can you point me at the fix, and I'll try it out. I notice that the Linux dmesg says: PCI: Using IRQ router VIA [1106/0686] at 00:07.0 Applying VIA southbridge workaround. So that could be the issue. I've got a 686 Southbridge on the Athlon XP as well, but it's running -CURRENT. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Friday, 28 December 2001 at 6:21:04 -0800, Keith Simonsen wrote: Greg, Do not forget to check your power supply make/model. If you search on google for AMD's recommended hardware list, double check you're power supply is listed for your cpu. This wouldn't explain why it works fine under Linux (and yes, it's still going). Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Friday, 28 December 2001 at 14:46:12 -0600, Glenn Johnson wrote: On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 06:10:09PM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' Just for the fun of it, I tried running Linux on it. I've been running a kernel build and 'make clean' on it now for 36 hours, and it's still running fine. Yesterday some Linux friends of mine came around and looked at it and told me that the Linux kernel I was running on the machine (2.4.16) had had a number of AMD-specific fixes put in. He didn't go into more detail, unfortunately, but I'll ask him again when I have time: it could be something relating to chipset bugs we have seen and fixed. It would help to know, though, if other people are experiencing similar problems. Please let me know if you're having problems with AMD processors which seem to be specific to FreeBSD, especially if they're hangs (i.e. the machine stops reacting, but the display still shows the last state, it doesn't reboot or panic). I have had this exact problem. I have an Epox 8KTA board with a 1GHz Athlon (Thunderbird) with 256MB of PC-133 memory. I would consistently get random errors, usually during a compilation, using the default BIOS settings. After fiddling with some of the BIOS options, such as enabling PCI burst, the system runs pretty stable. However, occasionally I will get that freeze that you refer to during a buildworld. As far as I can tell though if I set the memory clock to 100MHz the problem goes away completely, or at least I have not observed it happen yet. This is a Duron, so it has a 100 MHz memory clock anyway. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Friday, 28 December 2001 at 23:12:40 +0100, Søren Schmidt wrote: It seems Glenn Johnson wrote: It is really hard for me to say if this is FreeBSD specific because I do not tend to stress the system much when I have Linux running. My wife has an identical system running Windows 98SE and she has no problems but I know that I have installed software from Epox that specifically addresses some issues with the VIA chipset so that may be why. From what I can tell the newest Epox BIOS for the 8kta3 does *not* install the 686b fix when it doesn't detect a SBLive! sound card, nice but not good enough :/ Hmm, it has just occurred to me that this 686B fix relates to ata disks, doesn't it? The machine I'm having the problem with doesn't have any ata disks: I deliberately took them out to eliminate this source of problems. So this could be a different problem. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
On Sat, 29 Dec 2001, Greg Lehey wrote: This is a Duron, so it has a 100 MHz memory clock anyway. Greg Not necessarily; athlons durons use ddr clocking, so the processors are 200 or 266, effectively. Most motherboards let you set the memory bus to either 100 or 133, independent of processor bus speed. I'm running both of my durons with the ram at 133Mhz. While we're on this subject, I did buy a stick of Micron 256MB PC133 about a month or so ago, and it turned out to be bad and in need of replacing; bad ram is what I'd suspect first in any case of serious crashing. (Excluding the subtle corruption problems Matt / Soren are looking into.) Mike Silby Silbersack To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Does FreeBSD have a problem with some AMD processors?
I've been using AMD processors almost exclusively in my main work machines for over 4 years, and I've been very happy with them. I'm currently running a K6/233, a K6/333, an Athlon 750, a Duron 850 and an Athlon XP 1700. Last August, though, I bought a machine which gave me a lot of trouble, the Duron 850 mentioned above. I found that it would freeze for no apparent reason. I established that it wasn't the memory by taking the memory of another machine and running it like that; it made no difference. I ended up also changing the motherboard and the processor, but the hangs continued. I could expect a hang within 8 hours when doing 'make release' Just for the fun of it, I tried running Linux on it. I've been running a kernel build and 'make clean' on it now for 36 hours, and it's still running fine. Yesterday some Linux friends of mine came around and looked at it and told me that the Linux kernel I was running on the machine (2.4.16) had had a number of AMD-specific fixes put in. He didn't go into more detail, unfortunately, but I'll ask him again when I have time: it could be something relating to chipset bugs we have seen and fixed. It would help to know, though, if other people are experiencing similar problems. Please let me know if you're having problems with AMD processors which seem to be specific to FreeBSD, especially if they're hangs (i.e. the machine stops reacting, but the display still shows the last state, it doesn't reboot or panic). Information that could be interesting is (here my values): Processor:AMD Duron 850 Motherboard: ECS K7VZA Memory: 1 128 MB SIMM, 100 MHz. Greg -- For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
