c9c-ae@buddy.Berkeley.EDU (Clayton Yee) (11/20/86)
Hi,
I have been getting a system error 131 upon cold booting my machine,
a PC-1 with a color graphics card and a multifunction card. I have also
had a few parity 1 and parity 2 errors. Can anyone tell me what's wrong?
Many Thanks in Advance,
Clayton Yee
c9c-ae@buddy.berkeley.edu
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BITNET c9c-ae@ucbbuddy.BITNETdaved@micropro.UUCP (Dave Duchesneau) (11/21/86)
In article <1068@zen.BERKELEY.EDU> c9c-ae@buddy.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Clayton Yee) writes: > I have been getting a system error 131 upon cold booting my machine, >a PC-1 with a color graphics card and a multifunction card. I have also >had a few parity 1 and parity 2 errors. Can anyone tell me what's wrong? The 131 error is a system board error indicating a problem with the cassette interface. It should be safe to ignore. PARITY CHECK 1 means the _hardware_ detected a parity error in the RAM _on_the_system_board_. PARITY CHECK 2 means the hardware detected a similar fault in the RAM located on any expansion memory boards. It's marginally possible that all these problems are being caused by a flakey DMA chip, which is the big one (same shape as the 8088) that plugs in near to the power supply, in _front_ of the 8088/8087 sockets. It's location U35 on the PC board, and is an 8237A-5 chip. It's the single most common chip failure I've encountered in the old PC-1's, in fact, it's the only consistent one I've heard of. If all else fails, it may be worth replacing this chip (for around $30) before sending the whole board off for work (for lots more than $30). If you can, test your RAM in someone else's system. When you get BOTH PARITY CHECK 1 _and_ 2, chances are it's not _really_ your RAM that's having problems. That'd be sort of like having both rear tires on your car blow out at once -- unlikely. Good luck! -- Dave Duchesneau UUCP: {hplabs|dual|glacier|lll-crg}!well!micropro!daved