tcb (02/11/83)
My advice is to contact AMD directly and be persistant in working your way to the group there that is responsible for the chip design. We have had similar experiences with both the AMD9511 Math chip and with the AMD9519 Interupt Controller. Your intuition is probably correct - AMD doesn't know how to make LSI chips. At least, they don't have a very good batting average so far as getting things to work as advertised on the first go-round! Both the 9511 and 9519 turned out to have serious and subtle race problems THAT AMD KNEW ABOUT, WHILE STILL DISTRIBUTING PARTS! I once spent over a month trying to debug first hardware, then software, trying to understand why I was getting spurious interupts to random memory locations on a system that incorporated the interupt controller. In despair I finally pushed my way through to the right person at AMD (who at the time was Joe Kroeger - who I think is now with National) and his words were, "Oh yeah, we know about that... We're working on a new mask now..." Not afraid to state the facts... Tom Ballister Bell Telephone Labs Rm WB1D101 Holmdel, N.J. 07733 npois!houxm!wb2!tcb