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From: schwalbe@pinocchio.Encore.COM (Jim Schwalbe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Why I lower my CPU speed to 17.5MHz
Message-ID: <14004@encore.Encore.COM>
Date: 6 Feb 91 18:13:25 GMT
References: <1991Feb5.172330.27155@d.cs.okstate.edu>
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Reply-To: schwalbe@pinocchio.UUCP (Jim Schwalbe)
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In article <1991Feb5.172330.27155@d.cs.okstate.edu> ong@d.cs.okstate.edu 
(ONG ENG TENG) writes:
>
>After upping my 386SX from 16MHz to 20MHz (without heatsink or fan), it
>worked fine, and still will if I choose to run it at that speed.  But 
>after many hours of continuous operation, my fixed-HD (I have a
>fixed-HD and a SyQuest removable where I run off most of
>my softwares, the fixed-HD contains most "standard" programs like
>system programs, word processors, graphics editor, terminal emulator,
>etc, only) my fixed-HD started giving disk-read error.  To get rid of
>it, I simply do warm-boot (NO turning off the power). 
>

Ong,
	Is your fixed-HD controller on the motherboard? (i.e. IDE)  If not,
then maybe it is your bus speed which is causing the problem.  As I recall
you have the AMI BIOS and the C&T chip set.  With the setup, you can configure
the bus speed to be syncronously scaled with the processor speed (i.e. you'd
be running the bus at 10 MHz with the processor running at 20 MHz) or you
can make the bus speed be fixed at 8 MHz (asynchronous, independent of
processor speed).  This is what you should try, keeping the bus speed at 8 MHz
when you increase your processor speed to 20 MHz if you HD controller is on the
bus and not the motherboard.  It has been noted before that some peripheral
cards don't work reliably at 10 MHz.  I had this problem with my old ST-506
controller. Didn't like to work at 10 MHz.  I upgraded to a dual IDE hard
drive/ 4 Floppy controller (save a slot too!) and the problem went away.  (Of
course I got a bigger hard drive too).  I now run my bus at 10 MHz with no
problems.  Hope this might help.

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