Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!turing.toronto.edu!ruhtra
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
From: ruhtra@turing.toronto.edu (Arthur Tateishi)
Subject: Re: My 386 hangs at 25MHz, but not at 20MHz
Message-ID: <1990Aug10.151636.7719@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
References: <1990Aug9.163309.16138@arcturus.uucp>
Date: 10 Aug 90 19:16:36 GMT
Lines: 26

In article <1990Aug9.163309.16138@arcturus.uucp>, evil@arcturus.uucp (Wade Guthrie) writes:
>I just purchased a 386 (purchased w/ hercules-compatible graphics,
>a microsoft mouse, a single floppy, but no hard disk) and, separately,
>an Adaptec 1542B SCSI controller (which controls the floppy and. . .) 
>and, from a third party, a Seagate ST1096N hard disk drive.  
>
>I can boot my machine at 20MHz and run Windows 3.0 and Word For 
>Windows (I still haven't bought my C compiler and devlopment kit) 
>all day long; no problem.  If I boot at 25MHz, the system hangs.  
>Not always at the same point, mind you, (it seems to hang in the 
>middle of a hard or floppy disk access -- disk access light on but 
>nobody home -- but not always) it usually doesn't get past the 
>"white screen" on windows, but the other day it got into Word 
>before it hung.  

My guess at the problem would be that the busclock setting is too high.
The setup for AMI BIOS lets you decide between different bus-clock 
speeds and I wonder if changing the setup from CLKIN/2 to CLKIN/3, or
whatever, would solve the problem. CLK/2 would run the bus at 10MHz or
12.5 MHz which I feel may be just enough of a difference to cause
intermittent problems with slow things like drives.

-- 
``Sex and drugs? They're nothing compared with a good proof!''
                                - A Cambridge student  (r.h.f)
Arthur Tateishi                 g9ruhtra@zero.cdf.utoronto.edu