Re: NMI errors in 2.0.30??

Stefan Kreicker (stk@rmi.de)
Fri, 25 Apr 1997 13:34:56 +0200 (MET DST)

On 24 Apr, Jon Lewis wrote:
> I got this today on a relatively new system running 2.0.30.
>
> Uhhuh. NMI received. Dazed and confused, but trying to continue
> You probably have a hardware problem with your RAM chips or a
> power saving mode enabled.
>
> I really don't believe the message, as this is a Tomcat IIID (running with
> 2 CPU's but not an SMP kernel), 4 8x36-60 simms, and the setup passed
> several hours of memtest86 before going online. The CMOS setup is
> configured to do ECC and report single bit errors...could this cause
> problems for linux?

May it is a 'hardware' problem. In the sense of bios/board doing sort a
strange things. In a rescent issue of c't (3/97) a (the) german
computer magazin there was a test of 23 PPro boards regarding their
quality andcompatability, including a lot different Ram Modules and also
ECC checking and correction. Regarding ECC handling the result was
not good for a lot of boards/bioses. Also there seem to be sort of
disagreement amongst manufacturers what do do with a correctable error,
cause several boards reported NMI's even if the error was corrected.

btw: the stresstests were done under 4 OS'es including linux, and the
one doing best with ecc was linux

Stefan

-- 
 Stefan Kreicker                                   email:     stk@rmi.de
 Aix-la-Chapelle                                fax/data: +49-241-873958