Problems with an Intel 486 chip

[John C. Archambeau]

haugen at bulus3.BMA.COM (John M. Haugen) writes:
>We have a batch of Intel 486 chips which we have been having some problems with.
>The chips have the marking "Q0129" on them.  These chips work for the most part
>with DOS applications but we see them fail when running Interactive Unix and
>SCO Unix and on occasion Microsoft Windows 3.0.
>
>For both versions of Unix, we see the kernal die with a page mode
>fault (Trap E). Interactive will panic into the debugger about once a day
>while SCO panics during the initial phase of booting from the N2 diskette.
>
>For Microsoft Windows, we see the machine lock up in a similar manner.  I will
>not vouch for it since I don't know that software as well.
>
>Anyone else seen any problems like this with these chips and for that matter,
>does anybody else have these chips?

There's one thing that I do know.  The early versions of the 486 have a bug in
them.  It deals with the FPU portion of the 486.  From what I have heard on
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware, the chip will work just fine with MS-DOS, but go to
any other OS and it will blow up.  

Could somebody who's more experienced with the 486 please elaborate on this?
I know currently shipping 486 machines have the corrected 486's in them (at
least from the major vendors such as ALR), but the issue here is if it is the
older 486 or not.

     // JCA

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