Xref: utzoo comp.unix.xenix:7576 comp.unix.i386:433 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!cunyvm!ndsuvm1.bitnet!nu013809 From: NU013809@NDSUVM1.BITNET (Greg Wettstein) Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix,comp.unix.i386 Subject: Re: ALR CPU's Message-ID: <2777NU013809@NDSUVM1> Date: 12 Sep 89 13:50:35 GMT References: <29@fleet.UUCP> Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computer Network, Fargo, ND Lines: 112 DISCLAIMER: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article. This article is being composed from an ALR 386/220 running XENIX 2.3.1. Actually as you can tell from the mail header the mail is not coming from my machine here but rather I am in a terminal emulator running under VPIX connected to a mainframe. I spent about two months trying to get XENIX up and running on the ALR and I hope these comments will be of use. I started out and installed 2.3.1 on a stock 386/220 with a 70MB micropolis drive and 2 meg of ram on the motherboard. Everything installed just fine and ran like it was supposed to including VPIX. Two meg of memory is somewhat limited so I purchased the 32 bit memory expansion system which allows the machine to be expanded to 6 meg (2 on motherboard, 4 on expansion). On this machine the memory expansion system consists of two identical boards which plug into two special 16 bits slots which are designated as 32 bit expansion slots. Evidently the CPU and memory controllers know how to go through the necessary gymnastics to gain 32 bit accesses to these boards. I stuck the boards into the machine, re-configured the CMOS and kicked up the operating system. XENIX came up, I did a ps -e and the kernel panicked. I worked on the machine for about two days, RTFM'ed extensively, tested memory with various DOS utilities to no avail, the system still panicked. I called ALR, described the system and was put through eventually to customer support, (my local dealer is helpful but with no knowledge whatsoever of things beyond DOS and some LAN stuff). It should be noted that ALR is not real eager to put just common folk through to their techie types, it took some polite, forceful complaining to indicate to the people that there was no competent local help available. Their technical person was very knowledgable about the machine but offered what I considered to be somewhat odd advice. I had 80 nanosecond ram on the MB and the expansion boards had a mix of 80 and 70 nanosecond ram on it. The support person immediately indicated that my problem was due to the mis-matched speed of the chips on the expansion chassis. I have stuffed a lot of boards in the last five years and have had trouble with adding chips slower than indicated but never trouble with faster chips. I decided that they must know what they are doing and replaced all the 70 nanosecond parts with 80's and fired things up, kernel still panics....... I got ahold of technical support and convinced them that the mix of 70 and 80 second parts was not it. He then made the off-hand remark that they had some reports of trouble with the memory expansion cards. So I called my vendor, he shipped me two new sets of boards with new memory which he had also put in a 386/220 and run for a weekend with no problems. Installed new boards, kernel still panics..... At this point I began figuring that there was a fatal flaw somewhere with the motherboard and the addressing of the 32 bit memory on the expansion chassis. The other thing that bothered me was that the CPU had a large heat sink firmly cemented to the top of the chip. The 386/220 I had was of about 1988 vintage when 20 MHZ machines were first starting to appear. The thought kept running through my mind, 'I wonder if they stuck 16 MHZ parts in these early machines and over-clocked them.......'. What was especially troubling was that the heat-sink kept me from learning very much about the processor. At this point I had spent about two months monkeying around and our project was hopelessly behind schedule. We put a lot of pressure on our local vendor and he came up with a brand new 386/220. This was just a box with a MB, no memory, boards etc. I transplanted everything out of my machine into the new machine, kicked up XENIX and ..... no problems, everything including VPIX ran flawlessly and has continued to run flawlessly 24 hours/day since that time (2 months). Since we had purchased the machine less than a year ago our dealer to his credit left the new chassis with us and took back my old machine. The last I heard he was negotiating with ALR about a replacement motherboard. From what I understood ALR did not want to warranty the board since although the machine was in use for less than a year our dealer had taken delivery on the machine about two months prior to the time he had sold it to us and ALR claimed that the machine was effectively out of warranty. I guess that issue belongs in the realm of dealyer <-> supplier negotiations. The story does not end at this point however. I learned from my dealer's technical support person that they spent a lot of time dealing with ALR's technical support department about this motherboard. At some time during the process it was acknowledged that some (perhaps early board runs) MB's had severe DMA problems which produced problems with XENIX and/or NOVELL applications. It would have been nice if the technical support people had bothered to tell me this the first time I contacted them..... As it turns out there is probably a pretty good chance that the first set of memory boards were probably not troublesome although our vendor did have some difficulties with a few of those boards. I guess the upshot of all this is that our ALR 386/220 in its present incantation effectively and efficiently runs XENIX. It was unfortunate that it took about 2 1/2 months to get to that point. It is also interesting to note that the CPU on my new motherboard does not have a heat sink cemented to the top of the chip and the chip proudly proclaims itself as an 80386-20........ I should also point out that SCO technical support was very helpful throughout the process. They ran through all the hoops verifying that I did not have a bad version of the kernel or of VPIX. Considering that it was a total hardware problem I couldn't ask for much more. I would also like to thank Karl Denninger whom I met through the net for spending a fair amount of time talking to me about the problem even though I did not purchase any of the hardware or software from him. I would also like to thank the net for providing a forum where a lot of my problems get answered before I need to call the companies who sometimes seem much less knowledgable than the net gurus. As always, Dr. Greg Wettstein NU013809@NDSUVM1 P.S.: If I had to do it again what would I do?? Tough question, my group is committed to a number of XENIX installations. Considering the multiplicity of MB's, display adapters, drive controllers etc I am not sure how you get systems that will definitely work. I am beginning to think that the thing to do is to find a VAR or a dealer who specializes in XENIX/UNIX hardware and software and buy your system from them. I am sure that those guys have probably spent a lot of time trying to piece stuff together that they know works.