yale@stl.olivetti.com (Yale Rosenblatt) (04/29/89)
I have a Vax 750 running 4.2bsd. It is generally a pretty reliable machine. But just
lately a message keeps writing to the console. I'm not sure whether I should look at
memory or disk as the culprit and if there is any way of my fixing it at that time.
The error reads as follows:
mcr0: soft ecc addr 12ff syn 1f
The message has been writing to the console once every few minutes, for the last
few days. So I don't believe that is a catastrophic error.
This problem is not the sort of problem that the masses of the world are holding
their breath to hear about. So if someone can just call or mail to me personally,
that would be fine.
Yale Rosenblatt
Olivetti Software Technology Lab.
(415) 496-6622
yale@stl.olivetti.com
{ames,decwrl}!oli-stl!yaleed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould) (04/29/89)
> mcr0: soft ecc addr 12ff syn 1f >The message has been writing to the console once every few minutes, for >the last few days. So I don't believe that is a catastrophic error. This is a memory system error. "Soft" means corrected. "mcr0" is "memory controller 0" (there is only one controller on a 750). The "addr" field is a page address: add 9 low-order 0 bits to get the byte address of the beginning of the page; divide that by 1024*1024 (1 Mbyte) to determine which board is the culprit (for new-style 750s with 1 Mbyte boards). In this case, 0x12ff << 9 is 0x25fe00; 1024*1024 is 0x100000; this problem is in the third Mbyte (third board). The "syn" entry can be used to decode which chip has failed, but that decoding depends on who made the memory board. Consult the manufacturer's documentation. -- Ed Gould mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA 94710 USA ed@mtxinu.COM +1 415 644 0146 "I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady. I'll fight them as an engineer."