D.Heale@ee.surrey.ac.uk (David Charles Heale) (06/14/91)
I have been attempting to run the Minix 1.5 demo disc recently posted on comp.binaries.ibm.pc on an Amstrad PPC512 unsuccessfully. When I press = or u to start minix the error message given is: Nonmaskable interrupt process number -9, pc=0x0060:0x00000A55 Kernel panic: exception in kernel,mm or fs The machine has a V30 cpu, 512K RAM, two 720k 3.5" discs and an LCD CGA display. The technical manual indicates that NMI can be caused by RAM parity errors, the 8087 (not fitted) or the expansion bus I/OCHCK ( nothing connected to the bus).and that it is disabled on reset. The same disc immage will run on a 386 machine with 1M ram from a 1.2Mbyte but as it has a 5.25" drive A I cannot try the same disc on it. I have tried writing the boot disc for the Amstrad on both machines and using a root file system on a separate disc but this does not make and difference. If anyone has any information about this proplem, or if minix will run on the PPC512 at all please could you let me know. Thanks, David Heale.
jan@targon.UUCP (Jan van Zeggelaar) (06/17/91)
In article <1991Jun14.095241.26365@EE.Surrey.Ac.UK> D.Heale@ee.surrey.ac.uk (David Charles Heale) writes: > > I have been attempting to run the Minix 1.5 demo disc recently >posted on comp.binaries.ibm.pc on an Amstrad PPC512 unsuccessfully. When I >press = or u to start minix the error message given is: >Nonmaskable interrupt >process number -9, pc=0x0060:0x00000A55 >Kernel panic: exception in kernel,mm or fs >[lines deleted] > David Heale. I had the same problems. I found out that Minix didn't try to do anything after hitting 'u'. I also tried to get help but in the end I made a very dirty patch in exception.h. (of course I was lucky to be able to boot Minix on my 286 board. The problems arose after installing the 386). Before anybody makes this patch, I am not an expert so watch this space for flames. I simply don't 'panic' after an NMI once (for this I defined a static flag) but simply return. Then rebuild the system, make a new bootflop, and it works. Please, if my advise is very stupid, tell me before I, or anybody, get into serious trouble. Jan Z.