clewis@eci386.uucp (Chris Lewis) (02/03/90)
In article <958@dms.UUCP> morris@dms.UUCP (Jim Morris) writes: > From article <8529@portia.Stanford.EDU>, by jeff@portia.Stanford.EDU (Jeff McDonald): > > I recently purchased a Micronics 386/33 Mhz board and incorporated it... > > <reports FPU problems with Interactive Unix, blames Bios> deleted > I have the same system and BIOS and it runs SCO Xenix/386 2.3.2 with > no problem. It seems to know that there is no FPU, so I doubt it is > the BIOS at fault, sounds more like Interactive Unix??? 386/ix at least until recently trusted the BIOS to tell it whether a a FPU existed or not. *Some* BIOSes always get it wrong (old versions of AMI). Other BIOSes are fooled by bad jumper settings. Other BIOSes trust what's in the CMOS (an AST 386 we worked with once). The versions of Phoenix BIOS that we've used checks automatically and so far has *never* gotten it wrong. One frequent symptom is system hangs/crashes during FP usage. Particularly the /etc/dfspace (uses awk) in /etc/profile.... But some times the system won't boot at all. > Or check that all the jumpers associated with the FPU are set > correctly, failing that call Micronics Tech support at (408) 732 9240. Double check your jumpers and use the system's config program to make sure that the CMOS doesn't think you have a FPU. That ought to fix it. If not, apparently ISC does have a program that will fix this even if the BIOS lies. And if none of this solves your problem, get an FPU.... This has been a known "gotcha" for over two years. -- Chris Lewis, Elegant Communications Inc, {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!lsuc!eci386!clewis Ferret mailing list: eci386!ferret-list, psroff mailing list: eci386!psroff-list
root@nebulus.UUCP (Dennis S. Breckenridge) (02/04/90)
To detirmine what the kernel see's as its floating point try:
# crash
> od fp_kind
Crash will respond with 0-3. 0=no floating point, 1=software emulation
2=80287 FP chip, 3=80387 FP chip
Now if you are using an emulator here is a couple of tips. The
file /etc/emulator is a link to one of two emulators.
/etc/emulator.dflt is the standard (buggy) Microsoft Floating
point emulator. This emulator is very fast, but certain functions
dump core. I should also point out that if this file gets
truncated, and it does happen things start breaking all over the
place, mainly simultask. The other file (if it exists) is called
/etc/emulator.rel1. This is a much enhanced and considerably
slower FP emulator but for the most part it works!
--
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NAME: Dennis S. Breckenridge UUCP: dennis@nebulus
EMACS: Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping!
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