AST 33 MHZ PROBLEM

[Robert den Hartog]

In article <300fcc3e3ffc285d014c at rose.uucp> cary.lewis at rose.uucp (CARY LEWIS) writes:
>
>Is anyone aware of a known problem with AST 33 Mhz machines and
>Sco Unix 3.2? Apparently if the machine is powered up in fast (33 Mhz)
>mode and Unix is loaded when the machine is in fast mode then the
>machine will eventually crash!?!
>
>The solution is to power up the machine in slow mode, boot Unix and
>then use the keyboard to go back into Fast mode.
>
>It took us over a month to finally get an answer on this from either
>Sco or Ast. We contacted both but neither one told us about this
>supposedly known problem.
>
>I would be very interested in hearing from anyone else who has
>experienced this problem.
>---
> 
We are experiencing a problem with an AST Premium 386/20 that sounds similar
to yours.  It seems to crash after a little while with a Panic type 0x0000000E.
The SCO distributors told us it's either a bad memory cell, or a bad 3rd party
driver.  Of the latter we have none, only SCO Unix, Dev Sys, and SCO TCP/IP are
installed.

We've tried two different memory test packages (under DOS) and they both found
no fault(s).

Further to this we found that if we boot up DOS on the system, and then use the
reset button to go back to the boot: prompt to boot Unix, it nearly always
crash as soon as the kernal is loaded.  The only way around this is to power
off before changing from DOS to Unix.  (I suggested dumping DOS completely :-)

Finally we once got the error:-
ERROR: Parity error in Add-On board
PANIC: Unable to determine error location
then the "dummping xx pages" line.
(or similar)

Does any of this sound familiar.  Our SCO distributors haven't helped us any
beyond the "bad memory" response, and the mahines too busy to go away to a
repair shop (the local AST agaents are sales only.)

-- 
The spelling mistakes aren't mine, they're the computers.
Hey, have a nice one.
		      Robert den Hartog. {rden|robert}@{rden|mercury}.gen.nz

Sorry, just me again, I seem to have lost my EOF somewhere.  Aha, there it is