jstone@world.std.com (Jeffrey R Stone) (11/03/90)
tmbernat@shine3.waterloo.edu writes: >I recently purchased a clone 386-25MHz, with 1Mb (hey, only a poor student!), >and I run into weird things with it. When running programs I wrote in TC++ >the damn thing likes to hang on me. This never happens at 8Mhz. >Has anyone else ever had a problem like this? I didn't buy a 25MHz machine to >run it at 1/3 speed! The dealer won't help me. Is it a 'wait state' problem? I have a 33 MHz 386 in which I installed the noname Herc board which has run in my XT for a couple of years. One program in particular (and a text program at that) blanks the board at 33MHz, but works fine at 8. I thought my machine was hanging, til I happened to try typing to it blind. I dismissed the program and typed "MODE MONO" to DOS, and everything continued just as before the blanking. (It appears that the board goes into black-on-black, but I can't be sure). Could something like this be happening to you? -jeff-
darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain) (11/04/90)
In article <1990Nov2.203728.9507@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tmbernat@shine3.waterloo.edu writes: > >I recently purchased a clone 386-25MHz, with 1Mb (hey, only a poor student!), >and I run into weird things with it. When running programs I wrote in TC++ >the damn thing likes to hang on me. This never happens at 8Mhz. > >Has anyone else ever had a problem like this? I didn't buy a 25MHz machine to >run it at 1/3 speed! The dealer won't help me. Is it a 'wait state' problem? You imply that this only happens with programs that you write. Is this true? If so, what kind of programs are they? Wait states may be your problem but there is another possibility perhaps more likely. Check in your setup to see if you can control your bus speed. This is different from your CPU clock and is often stated in terms of a divide factor of your clock. If you are running the bus faster than 8 Mhz try slowing it down to that. Dividing the CPU clock by 3 should be close enough. The reason I think of this possibility is that you may be running some particular device in your program that can't keep up with a fast bus. That is why I asked what your programs are doing. You may be having the problem only when you go to a particular card. Also try to run your programs on other people's systems to see if it only happens on the one machine. You say the dealer won't help you but he may let you run your program on another machine of the same model. If he won't be sure to post locally the name of the dealer and the problems you are having with them. No sense someone else on the net getting stuck with that type of "support." -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid) | D'Arcy Cain Consulting | I support gun control. West Hill, Ontario, Canada | Let's start with the government! + 416 281 6094 |
gsisson@beowulf.ucsd.edu (Glenn Sisson) (11/04/90)
>I recently purchased a clone 386-25MHz, with 1Mb (hey, only a poor student!), >and I run into weird things with it. When running programs I wrote in TC++ >the damn thing likes to hang on me. This never happens at 8Mhz. >Has anyone else ever had a problem like this? I didn't buy a 25MHz machine to >run it at 1/3 speed! The dealer won't help me. Is it a 'wait state' problem? I have a JDR Microdevices motherboard 286 system (Neat chipset). When I bought it, I assumed that everything would run at the claimed 16 MHz. What really happens (as I understand it), is that the CPU runs at 16 MHz, and accesses motherboard memory at 16 MHz (with wait states if you set it up that way depending on your memory chip speeds), but when the CPU needs to use the bus (to talk to a display adapter for example), it may run at a different speed. On my JDR mother board there is a jumper to control whether it runs the bus at 8 MHz or 12 MHz. I set it for 12 and have had no problem with slow adapter cards. Perhaps you have such a jumper too, and you need to select a slower bus speed when talking to adapter cards. --- glenn "just a guess" sisson