Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helps!bigtex!james
From: james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell
Subject: Re: i486 with Netware 386
Message-ID: <55206@bigtex.cactus.org>
Date: 26 Feb 91 03:22:05 GMT
References: <91042.192216ALG106@psuvm.psu.edu> <1154@intelisc.isc.intel.com> <1164@intelisc.isc.intel.com> <1258@pcgw.sm.sony.co.jp>
Reply-To: james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen)
Organization: Institute of Applied Cosmology, Austin TX
Lines: 31

In <1258@pcgw.sm.sony.co.jp>, samba@sm.sony.co.jp (Masaaki Hoshino) wrote:

> Now, Our 486 33MHz machine has the following trouble with Netware 386 v3.1.

>   1. Pressing Caps Lock, Numeric Lock, or Scroll Lock keys will cause
>      a lost interrupt detected message as follows.

>      "Interrupt controller detected a lost hardware interrupt"

>   2. When using NE3200 EISA Bus Master LAN card with our SCSI disk driver 
>      (NLM), the same message is often indicated on the server console. 

> I asked Novell IMSP division about it. They said this problem is caused by
> 486 CPU with Programmable Interrupt Controller(PIC), and the above messages
> will occur with Netware 3.1 on all 486 systems regardless of bus type( ISA,
> EISA, MCA) with varying frequency.

These should not happen with a C step 486 at all, I believe.  Even
with a B step 486, I think Intel published an errata with suggested
hardware fixes to put on the motherboard.  The bug is independent of
bus type and CPU frequency.  It isn't Netware specific either - the
system BIOS usually doesn't say anything when an interrupt is lost.

Even with a B step 486, some interrupt controllers will not confused
by the behavior of the CPU, so just because you have B step doesn't
mean you will get errors.

Have your engineers contact Intel about the tech note on this 486 bug.
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen          james@bigtex.cactus.org   "Live Free or Die"
Dell Computer Co    9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759         512-338-8789


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