Re: Dual athlon XP 1800 problems

[David Crooke <dave@convio.com>]

Not sure if this is an apposite list, but found this thread .... 
apologise in advance.

I just built a similar dual AMD machine tonight and it also has 
issues....... never used any AMD stuff before so venturing into new turf.

Tyan S2460  - motherboard sticker says "C", BIOS rev 1.03
2 x Athlon MP 2000+ (1666 MHz) - retail packaged, AMD clip-on heatsinks 
and fans
1Gb PC2100 ECC registered memory (2 x 512Mb DIMMs, Kingston branded)
Red Hat 7.2 but downloaded and built 2.4.19, configured for SMP, Athlon 
target
Single IDE drives, no RAID or stuff like that
Tekram DC390 (8 bit SCSI)
3Com Cyclone 3C905
D-Link DE-590TX (??) - uses ne2k-pci driver, has worked since early 
2.0.x and probably before
ATI Rage 3D Pro (AGP 2x)

Big Antec case with a ton of fans :-)

1. When I first put it together, it would consistenly run OK for a 
period of 4-5 minutes, quite precisely - no less than 4, no more than 5 
and then just lock up HARD - no Ctrl-Alt-Del, no kernel panics, nothing. 
Once or twice it seemed like it stuttered - as if the load was like 
10.00 or higher, the keystroke echo would take 2-3 seconds.

2. First try - I pulled the Tekram (it's ancient and has bootable BIOS) 
- no difference

3. Tried some BIOS settings (e.g. SMP 1.1 mode) - it DOES NOT like this; 
any BIOS changes AT ALL (even seemingly harmless ones like Num Lock) 
appear to mess it up totally, and LILO hangs at "LI" when trying to 
start. Restored factory defaults.

4. Then I noticed that the CPU1 heatsink was quite warm (maybe 70C 
feeling around the thick bit of the aluminium) whereas CPU0 heatsink is 
just above room temp.

5. Checking the Winbond monitoring in the BIOS** menu, it comes up 
showing both CPU's at 77C, then as you hit keys it takes proper 
readings, and claims both CPUs within 1-2 degrees of each other (??). It 
seems accurate on fan speeds though. Both fans running pretty fast, 
5500-6200 RPM.

6. Pulled CPU1, messed around some - same behaviour, lock ups after 4-5 mins

7. Brought it up to single user mode console, to see if it was video 
card etc. - did some testing of just letting it mostly idle (while true 
- uptime - sleep 1 - etc.) and locked up 1-2 more times.

8. Rebooted again, now it's up and running and appears stable (still 1 
CPU), so I took it up to full init 5 and it stayed up (and so I'm 
writing this email :-)  Once or twice seemed to stall again for 1-2 
seconds (interrupt storm ???) but recovered.

Anyone have suggestions? I'm thinking to leave it running and see if it 
stays up. Smells of a hardware issue, but also the BIOS seems a bit 
funny (there is a message in the Help which says "this setting for debug 
only - remove for production" !!)

Other observation, possibly unrelated: the unpacking of the kernel seems 
very slow for an otherwise pretty quick machine - the dots when it says 
"Loading xxx..." tick at about 1 per second, much like a laptop with 
PC-66 memory, compared with 4-5 per second for the Pentium III 
800/PC-133 motherboard I just hauled out.




** The temperature sensor driver stuff didn't seem to come with the 
kernel ??