det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) (06/19/89)
In article <781@cgh.UUCP>, david@cgh.UUCP (David Kozinn) writes: > I've got a problem on my System V/386 3.0e system where I seem to get > a "NMI in System Mode" pretty regularly after the system has been up > for a couple of minutes (or more.) [...] > Since the system documentation says that that message can occur > because of memory problems, I ran memory diagnostics and found no > problems. [...] I had exactly the same problem on my machine (an Acer 1100/386 running V/386 3.0 (now 3.0e)) -- that is, running for apparently random periods of time, but never exceeding a week and, sometimes, as little as 3 minutes before crashing with the NMI panic. The problem is indeed with one or more bad memory chips. Don't trust the memory diagnostics. They most likely don't test the memory very well -- and/or are designed specifically for DOS (most likely). The intel diagnostics for memory, for example, will not fail even if a chip is physically removed from the board! Pretty scarey. I fixed my problem completely by starting with a min amount of memory (x number of columns) and running for a while and then incrementing the memory by one column and running some more, etc. until i had isolated the bad memory chip to a single column and then had the vendor replace the entire column. No more problems.. Hope this helps, derek -- Derek Terveer det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG || ..!uunet!rosevax!elric!hawkmoon!det w(612)681-6986 h(612)688-0667 "A proper king is crowned" -- Thomas B. Costain
david@cgh.UUCP (David Kozinn) (07/23/89)
I've got a problem on my System V/386 3.0e system where I seem to get
a "NMI in System Mode" pretty regularly after the system has been up
for a couple of minutes (or more.) The message only shows up once,
and after I get it the only symptom appears to be that the consoles'
scrolling (all of them, including the virtual consoles) are messed
up. Specifically, when the cursor is on the last line and the text is
supposed to scroll, instead of scrolling it wraps around to the top
of the screen again. (I've seen terminals that do this, but at least
they have the courtesy to clear each line before overwriting it!
<sigh>) Before I get the message, all works just fine.
Since the system documentation says that that message can occur
because of memory problems, I ran memory diagnostics and found no
problems. I also swapped out the video card and replaced it with
another and it made no difference. Incidentally, the machine is a
Compaq Deskpro 386 (16Mhz) with 4Mb of RAM and an 80287 coprocessor.
Aside from the screen problems, there are no other apparent symptoms,
and the system will run just fine for days after this problem occurs.
I'm totally at a loss. Can someone at least point me at something
that I can look at? Thanks in advance.
--
David Kozinn
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Internet: cgh!david@manta.pha.pa.us
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