bei@halley.UUCP (Bob Izenberg) (05/26/90)
The AT clone that I bought recently would lock up completely when
running any version of Central Point's disk cache using extended memory. After
some back and forth on the phone over a few days, it became apparent that the
cache wasn't the villain. I brought the machine back today to have the chips
checked, and a parity error did turn up. Despite the chip's being replaced,
however (actually, the whole strip was) the crash still occurs. Following
Central Point's advice, I edited CONFIG.SYS to have a line such as this
device=vdisk.sys 3200 512 512 512 /E
in it, and after booting, I try to fill the disk up. Each time, the machine
stops dead, with no parity error message (Do AMI BIOSes shout when one is
detected?) and I have to reach for the power switch. At this point, I am
questioning my wisdom in buying from a computer store instead of putting the
machine together myself. This is my first store-bought micro and it's been
a trial. Side issue: a Miniscribe 3053 which works perfectly outside of the
drive enclosure fails completely, can't even be low-leveled, when put in the
case and mounted. One of the folks at the store tells me that some drives
suffer from the mounting screws that hold them to the drive barn. He did
find this with floppy and not fixed drives, more often that not, however. It
makes me wonder if this board even passes Class B specs... The store takes
a strict Not Purchased Here line, so I'll probably buy a drive from them so
that they have to make it work. If theirs fails, they can always blame it
on my VGA board or mouse... 1/2 a :-)
Has anyone else had similar problems with extended memory hangs on 286-12
system boards? With container-sensitive hard drives?
-- Bob
Bob Izenberg [ ] Tandem Computers, Inc.
cs.utexas.edu!halley!bei [ ] 512 244 8837