GA-7DX+ crashes

Matt Bernstein (mb/lkml@dcs.qmul.ac.uk)
Wed, 14 Aug 2002 13:12:43 +0100 (BST)


Hi,

We're very much at a loss as to why the 60 new PCs we've bought largely
don't run Linux (various 2.4 kernels including 2.4.19, limbo1-BOOT) for
very long without crashing. One of them seems to work OK; its /proc/pci is
identical, but the batch number on the southbridge seems one lower--is
this dodgy VIA hardware again? We'll be trying a different IDE controller
next, but 60 of those ain't cheap..

Has anyone else had success or failure stories in particular with this
motherboard? We don't really have a significant number of data points just
yet, but are willing to try pretty much anything anyone might suggest!

Matt

symptoms
- random data corruption (sometimes memory, more often HDD)
- somtimes oopsing, but never in the same place

what we think we've ascertained so far
- they pass memtest86
- we've tried different HDDs, no effect
- tried ide=nodma, possibly makes it crash after longer
- tried noapic, no effect
- tried all sorts of BIOS settings, no effect (except--possibly--turning
off the on board IDE controller and playing nfsroot games)
- ..and yet they seem to run that other OS fine :-(
- extra cooling/underclocking doesn't seem to help
- seems to be fs-independent (tried ext3, reiserfs, jfs)

hardware
- GA-7DX+ motherboard
- AMD 761 northbridge
- VIA 686B southbridge
- Athlon 2000XP
- 256MB DDR RAM

/proc/pci and /proc/cpuinfo:

PCI devices found:
Bus 0, device 0, function 0:
Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-760 [IGD4-1P] System Controller (rev 20).
Master Capable. Latency=32.
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe8000000 [0xebffffff].
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xee006000 [0xee006fff].
I/O at 0xd000 [0xd003].
Bus 0, device 1, function 0:
PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-760 [IGD4-1P] AGP Bridge (rev 0).
Master Capable. Latency=32. Min Gnt=14.
Bus 0, device 7, function 0:
ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 64).
Bus 0, device 7, function 1:
IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. Bus Master IDE (rev 6).
Master Capable. Latency=32.
I/O at 0xd400 [0xd40f].
Bus 0, device 7, function 2:
USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. UHCI USB (rev 26).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. Latency=32.
I/O at 0xd800 [0xd81f].
Bus 0, device 7, function 3:
USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. UHCI USB (#2) (rev 26).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. Latency=32.
I/O at 0xdc00 [0xdc1f].
Bus 0, device 7, function 4:
SMBus: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 64).
IRQ 9.
Bus 0, device 7, function 5:
Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 80).
IRQ 5.
I/O at 0xe000 [0xe0ff].
I/O at 0xe400 [0xe403].
I/O at 0xe800 [0xe803].
Bus 0, device 13, function 0:
Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C (rev 16).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. Latency=32. Min Gnt=32.Max Lat=64.
I/O at 0xec00 [0xecff].
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xee004000 [0xee0040ff].
Bus 0, device 15, function 0:
FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB12LV23 IEEE-1394 Controller (rev 0).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. Latency=32. Min Gnt=15.Max Lat=15.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xee005000 [0xee0057ff].
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xee000000 [0xee003fff].
Bus 1, device 5, function 0:
VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 (GeForce2 MX) (rev 178).
IRQ 10.
Master Capable. Latency=32. Min Gnt=5.Max Lat=1.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xec000000 [0xecffffff].
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe0000000 [0xe7ffffff].

processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 6
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 1675.283
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 3342.33

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