Hardware Diagnostics?

Hardware Diagnostics?

[Randall R Schulz]

Hello,

 From time to time I cast about for software that will perform 
hardware diagnostics. To date, I've come up completely empty. As a 
youg 'un learning computers with PDP-11s and VAXes all about, we 
always had low-level diagnostics we could run to find bad memory 
locations, processor glitches, I/O channel problems, disk errors, etc.

Is this no longer true? Is it one of those things that separates the 
"desktop" / personal computer from the workstation and mainframe? 
Does anyone know of any programs that fit this general description? 
I'm most interested in RAM and cache diagnostics, since that seems 
like the most likely point of failure. CPU diagnostics would be nice, 
too and I feel least concerned about the disk. If my concerns are 
askew, please enlighten me.

Any help of any sort would be appreciated!

Thanks.

Randy Schulz
Mountain View, CA USA

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: Hardware Diagnostics?

[Dan Bethe]

	Well right next door to your own neighborhood,
Randall, lies a strange little organization some call
VA Linux Systems.  I call it VA Research because
golly, that's what it was when I wrenched 6 months of
MY LIFE INTO IT.
	Well anyhow my roommate, their junior software
engineer, has coded a hardware burn-in scripting
language and the scripts necessary for it to have
basically destroyed certain parts of Linux and every
aspect of VA's IA32-based hardware.  It has exhibited
many known longstanding really-hard-to-fix flaws in
ext2.  In its current basic state, it's a real
MTBF-dropper.  :}
	It'll soon be sent into opensourcedom.
	Is a burn-in script what you're lookin for?

--- Randall R Schulz <rrschulz@cris.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
>  From time to time I cast about for software that
> will perform 
> hardware diagnostics. To date, I've come up
> completely empty. As a 
> youg 'un learning computers with PDP-11s and VAXes
> all about, we 
> always had low-level diagnostics we could run to
> find bad memory 
> locations, processor glitches, I/O channel problems,
> disk errors, etc.
> 
> Is this no longer true? Is it one of those things
> that separates the 
> "desktop" / personal computer from the workstation
> and mainframe? 
> Does anyone know of any programs that fit this
> general description? 
> I'm most interested in RAM and cache diagnostics,
> since that seems 
> like the most likely point of failure. CPU
> diagnostics would be nice, 
> too and I feel least concerned about the disk. If my
> concerns are 
> askew, please enlighten me.
> 
> Any help of any sort would be appreciated!
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Randy Schulz
> Mountain View, CA USA
> 
> 


=====
"Don't expect your own messiah; this neverworld which you desire is
only in your mind." -- http://www.dreamtheater.net/songb4.htm#IV5

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/