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From: shiva@well.sf.ca.us (Kenneth Porter)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: Copying to floppy isn't reliable
Summary: CPU is B-step 386
Message-ID: <25567@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 21 Jun 91 17:49:28 GMT
References: <25433@well.sf.ca.us>
Distribution: comp
Lines: 23



It appears my query about floppy troubles was premature.  A
coworker reported that only the Dell 310's exhibit this
problem, and upon checking, I found that they were the only
machines with a "B-step" 386 processor, which is an early
flawed chip revision that Autodesk warns about.  One of the
guys in drafting who uses AutoCAD 11 under DOS was having all
kinds of trouble on his PS/2 Model 80; it was hanging up
several times an hour.  We swapped in another (we thought)
identical PS/2 and the hangs went away. There's a program
included with AutoCAD that checks for the flakey 386 so on a
hunch we went around and tried it on several machines and found
that his old PS/2 and the Dell's that we were having floppy
problems with all had the B-step chip.  We're now trying to
get new CPU's to see if it fixes the problem.
 
Upon further testing, I think that the problem I reported a few
months ago regarding failures of DosReallocSeg may also be due
to the B-step CPU.  I'll report back on this once I replace the
CPU.
 
Ken (shiva@well.sf.ca.us)