Problem with Canon A200EX II and Sun PC-NFS

[laukee at canon.co.uk]

On certain of our PCs PC-NFS crashes and locks the machine with a 'RAM
PARITY ERROR'.  This only occurs on the Canon A200EX II machines.  We have
run the same setup with success on Canon A200EV machines, so it seems to
be a problem specific to the A200EX II (both the EX and the EV are 286
machines).

The cards and software were supplied by Sun, but we have not yet had much
help from their support guys (Question: are they responsible for making it
work on someone else's h/w?  Can we get our money back if it can't be made
to work?).

Symptoms 
-------- 
The error causes the machine to crash with the following message:

RAM PARITY ERROR: CHECKING FOR SEGMENT ADDRESS
O
OFFENDING SEGMENT: 0000  

This often occurs immediately upon booting the PC, but sometimes it does
run successfully for a short time (during which PC-NFS, telnet, etc.
appear to function correctly).  Occasionally, the PC will die with a
'DIVIDE OVERFLOW' error.

Setup
-----
We have A200EX II with 1Mb RAM, Microsoft DOS 3.2, PC-NFS 3.0.1, 3Com
3C503 EtherLink II ethernet card and, for what it's worth, the pcnfsd
(with 'socket' fix) running on a 4/370 SunOS4.1 and a 3/260 SunOS3.5.
We've tried it coexistant with a LocalTalk Flashcard and TOPS, and with
TOPS uninstalled. We've also tried it on a machine clean of any fiddling
(except an external h/d).  The Ethernet card is in default configuration
(I/O base address 0x300, DMA channel 1, interrupt level 3), though we've
tried flicking through other plausible configurations with no apparent
effect.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be, or suggestions for
how I can get an A200EX II to run PC-NFS?

David Lau-Kee, Canon Research Centre Europe,
Frederick Sanger Rd, Surrey Research Park, Guildford, Surrey, GU25YD, UK.
NRS: laukee at uk.co.canon, INET: laukee%canon at nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
UUCP: laukee at canon.uucp, PATH: ..!mcsun!ukc!uos-ee!canon!laukee
Tel: +44 (0) 483 574325 Fax: +44 (0) 483 574360