laukee@canon.co.uk (11/30/90)
On certain of our PCs PC-NFS crashes and locks the machine with a 'RAM PARITY ERROR'. This only occurs on the Canon A200EX II machines. We have run the same setup with success on Canon A200EV machines, so it seems to be a problem specific to the A200EX II (both the EX and the EV are 286 machines). The cards and software were supplied by Sun, but we have not yet had much help from their support guys (Question: are they responsible for making it work on someone else's h/w? Can we get our money back if it can't be made to work?). Symptoms -------- The error causes the machine to crash with the following message: RAM PARITY ERROR: CHECKING FOR SEGMENT ADDRESS O OFFENDING SEGMENT: 0000 This often occurs immediately upon booting the PC, but sometimes it does run successfully for a short time (during which PC-NFS, telnet, etc. appear to function correctly). Occasionally, the PC will die with a 'DIVIDE OVERFLOW' error. Setup ----- We have A200EX II with 1Mb RAM, Microsoft DOS 3.2, PC-NFS 3.0.1, 3Com 3C503 EtherLink II ethernet card and, for what it's worth, the pcnfsd (with 'socket' fix) running on a 4/370 SunOS4.1 and a 3/260 SunOS3.5. We've tried it coexistant with a LocalTalk Flashcard and TOPS, and with TOPS uninstalled. We've also tried it on a machine clean of any fiddling (except an external h/d). The Ethernet card is in default configuration (I/O base address 0x300, DMA channel 1, interrupt level 3), though we've tried flicking through other plausible configurations with no apparent effect. Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be, or suggestions for how I can get an A200EX II to run PC-NFS? David Lau-Kee, Canon Research Centre Europe, Frederick Sanger Rd, Surrey Research Park, Guildford, Surrey, GU25YD, UK. NRS: laukee@uk.co.canon, INET: laukee%canon@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk UUCP: laukee@canon.uucp, PATH: ..!mcsun!ukc!uos-ee!canon!laukee Tel: +44 (0) 483 574325 Fax: +44 (0) 483 574360