archmage@cbnewse.att.com (Raistlin Majere) (09/07/90)
I have been having some problems, recently, and have decided to pose my questions to the "collective" mind of the "NET". I am experiencing problems with an AMI 25mhz (no cache) motherboard, yet I am unsure whether the problem is the motherboard itself, or something I may have configured wrong in the CMOS, etc. To start, the board is a baby AT with the Chips and Technologies chip- set. When I received the board, and attempted to configure the CMOS, I found that the manual accompanying the board said to leave the settings for the "clock" stuff alone. It claimed that it was set at the time the system was assembled. Trouble is, I bought the board by itself, and the lithium battery wasn't connected, thus I have *no way* of knowing what the proper settings for the clock on this system are supposed to be! I played with various settings and found that most of them caused the disk drives to lock up at various points (like loading UNIX System V packages). At the third or fourth disk, the system would lock up, the drive light would stay on, and it would just keep spinning. I know that if the clock settings are wrong, it can cause the system to experience sporadic memory problems. Well, after much playing, I came up with the following settings in the CMOS; Processor Oscillator ATCLK SCLK This seemed to cure the "drive lock-up" problem. Here is where I ran in to more problems. I am running AT&T UNIX on the system, and have yet to experience any problems. However, while attempting to run Microsoft Windows 3.0 on my MS-DOS partition, I kept getting a "Parity Error ????" message, followed underneath by "System Halted". I had booted up DOS from my A: drive, I was *not* trying to run it from Simultask (VP/IX) under UNIX. While in "Windows", I would get an error message from Windows when trying to start certain programs, saying "Unrecoverable Application Error", at which point it would randomly kick me back to Windows or, occassionally(sp), straight out of Windows to the "Parity Error ???? System Halted" message. It all appeared to be random, and it didn't happen while trying to run any particular Windows application. The "Parity Error ????" message required me to reboot the system. I have noticed that if I decrease the amount of buffers in my "config. sys" file to a number under 20, this seems to stop the parity message during Windows, and the Windows program seems to run fine. However, if I then exit Windows and attempt to run another program, a game, whatever, I randomly get the parity message and the system lock-up. I also have discovered if I take out the Windows stuff from "config.sys" file ( the HIMEM and SMARTDRIVE lines) and then reboot....all my regular applications seem to work fine, and I get no lockups. This is all very wierd, and I am appealing to anyone else out here who might know anything about this, or who might have encountered any similar problems. The first thing I would like to know is, what should the clock settings for the board be? Do I have mine set right? Is this why I am getting the parity errors? The next thing I would like to know is if anyone knows of problems similar to the ones I encountered with MS-Windows 3.0? I would like to determine whether or not this is a problem with the software of the m-board before I pack the damn thing up and ship it back. The fact that I have had not *one* problem running UNIX, and that my problems have come up under MS-DOS, lead me to believe that it is probably something in the CMOS setup or in the setup of MS-DOS. (Also note that it is *isn't* the SIMMS. I have replaced the SIMMS three times, and the system did it under each new set of SIMMS. I have also made sure that the memory jumpers were set right, and they were.) Also, does anyone have an address or phone number for AMI??? The board is still under warranty and I'd much rather deal directly with AMI. I get this feeling that I'll never see the board again if I send it back to the place I bought it from. Much thanx in advance..................... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And these children that you spit on, as the try to change their world, are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through. Ch-Ch-Changes, Turn and face the strange, Ch-Ch-Changes, Don't tell them to grow up and out of it......... -David Bowie ******************************************************************************* Raistlin Majere - Tower of High Sorcery - Palanthas Disclaimer:The views above are my own and not AT&T's or my employers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------