XENIX 386 ESDI Crash

[William E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <1988Mar10.163610.27000 at gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> romwa at gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Mark Dornfeld) writes:
| I think SCO's ESDI version is not quite right yet.  I did my
| own installation of an SMS OMTI 8620 Controller on a Compaq
| [...]
| 
| The system periodically crashes when one of the peripherals is
| being heavily used.  When extracting a tar archive from
| floppy, the system will report:
| 
| memory failure - parity error
| omti: controller already in select state
| 
  Sure sounds familiar! I have seen this on a number of machines now,
and it was caused by trying to run 16 bit memory. When you get the hard
disk (1 DMA channel) and the floppy or tape (or serial ports??) and the
CPU in 32 bit mode all beating the 16 bit memory, it doesn't have time
to refresh. BANG! parity error.

  If you have all 32 bit memory then this is a new one, but if you have
16 bit memory, pull it out and try again. At least in three cases this
was one that really was software.

  Please post the results one way or the other. Good luck.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me