v083pzgu@UBVMSB.CC.BUFFALO.EDU (Dan C Teodor) (10/29/90)
I've been reading this folder and realize most of the stuff in here is top level. I just have a comment with a possible urge for suggestions. Remember the IBM PC's? Those lackluster 286/386/486 or possibly even T800 RISC machines sitting on people's desks across the country? Remember DOS? You know...CPM eveolves to Q-DOS evolves to DOS? Remember Microsoft? That gr8 company that first began producing some real software for those millinos of people with said lackluster machines? Well, here's something interesting: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the past year, with the new VLSI technologies and NEAT chipsets appearing all over the place, ridiculously small 286 and 386 machines became affordable. Well, I recently put together one such machine for my personal nicknacks. It consists of a 16Mhz 286, a couple Mb of parity checked RAM, and reasonably motile RLL disk IO controller. Your basic avergae jow schmoe system. Here's the catch: Every major piece of Microsoft software crashes or has unrecoverable application errors in the 16 MHz mode!! I'm talking about Microsoft Word and Microsoft Windows. They all run just fine in 8 MHz mode but not in 16. I haev tried everything. I have pulled out the Nth engine card. I have tried reinterleaving and a LOT of other things only to come to the conclusion that it is a CPU crash and has nothing to do with any kind of disk IO. I am not even networking the machine so there's no possibility for error there. What's even scarier is that mine isn't the only machine that displays this unerving habit. I've seen this same problem on A LOT of super over turbo caboozled 286 motherboards where the processor is forced to cycle at faster and faster speed than it was designed for and it forced to support 0 wait state and 64K ram caches. I don't know if anybody that reads any of these lines deals with small stuff like this but be warned this pitfall exists with 286 machines and microsoft in DOS, Concurrect DOS and DR DOS environments. Now for the plea for some info... Does anybody know anything about this??? Any idea at all?? I have stumped five resident genuises with this all over New york state in the past three months. PS. I am beginning to suspect the 386 BIOS for 286 chipset now simply because I am running out of possible channels to look for problems in. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- V083PZGU@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU TEODOR@SUN.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU