Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix Subject: Re: XENIX 386 ESDI Crash Message-ID: <9927@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> Date: 14 Mar 88 20:29:56 GMT References: <1988Mar10.163610.27000@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 27 Keywords: XENIX ESDI Crash In article <1988Mar10.163610.27000@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> romwa@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Mark Dornfeld) writes: | I think SCO's ESDI version is not quite right yet. I did my | own installation of an SMS OMTI 8620 Controller on a Compaq | [...] | | The system periodically crashes when one of the peripherals is | being heavily used. When extracting a tar archive from | floppy, the system will report: | | memory failure - parity error | omti: controller already in select state | Sure sounds familiar! I have seen this on a number of machines now, and it was caused by trying to run 16 bit memory. When you get the hard disk (1 DMA channel) and the floppy or tape (or serial ports??) and the CPU in 32 bit mode all beating the 16 bit memory, it doesn't have time to refresh. BANG! parity error. If you have all 32 bit memory then this is a new one, but if you have 16 bit memory, pull it out and try again. At least in three cases this was one that really was software. Please post the results one way or the other. Good luck. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me