Re: [Freemint-discuss] Memory Protection on Falcon/CT60

[Mark D. <mdu...@at...>]

I don't believe my problem is CPU.  Specifically because I can build
large software packages without compiler errors.  However, if I add some
network traffic things go haywire with very little running.  mint booted
with as little running as possible to bash shell, ssh to a server and
tail a log and it will get a memory violation soon.  Heavy cpu use or
heavy memory use alone - no problem. 

For some reason moving the mouse a lot while loading xcontrol can always
cause a memory violation.  Even when the system otherwise appears
stable.  I wonder if that is just an actual bug and I should look to
triggering other issues.  I can also cause memory violations with
specific sequences of actions in Thing and it threw me off for a long
time until I tried it on the beepi and it did the same thing.  Not fun
to chase software bugs thinking it's hardware.  Right now I have a
bleeding edge 1.19 kernel loaded with no ethernat board and it is rock
solid but I need to get PPP to work or throw an ethernec in (which will
require extraction from a well setup mega ste).

I wonder if Rodolphe could make a "safer timing" version of the
ABE/ADR.  Seems like everything is tuned to the limit.

Also my cpu speed is 92MHz, but I have the same issues exactly at 50MHz.

In my case the ctpci ribbon went through the power connector and fried
the CTPCI at some point.  It got repaired and this is the repaired one. 
I wonder if there is some other very minor damage that causes
intermittent problems.  That would be very sad.

Thanks,

Mark



On 05/06/2018 07:14 AM, David Gálvez wrote:
> 2018-05-06 4:38 GMT+02:00 Mark Duckworth <mdu...@at...>:
>> 1.17 is not perfectly stable but it is orders of magnitude more stable,
>> to the point that you can get some use out of it.  For instance i can
>> run conholio on a busy terminal for days with no problem.  I do believe
>> now though that the later kernels are just better at showing a hardware
>> issue that is present in 1.17 as well.
>>
>> With the ethernat pulled 1.19 4c3 seems perfect.  I'll need to put an
>> ethernec in to really beat it up and verify in all scenarios but I
>> believe the issue is some kind of bus loading/interrupt issue on the 060
>> side.  I have as far as I know all the most recent ABE/SDR and CTPCI
>> images and the ones that are valid for my setup.
>>
>> My CTPCI was corrupting IDE transfers too.  I am curious if it still
>> does it with the ethernat removed now that things seem more stable.
> Your problems seems very similar with what I had with my old CT60.
> I noticed that something was wrong while compiling intensive stuff
> like the kernel, I got random compiler errors, memory protection was
> off probably.
> Things got worse when I got the Supervidel and I plugged it together
> with the EtherNat. After some tests I realized that the only stable
> configuration was having only one card plugged with the CPU speed set
> at 66 Mhz, any increase of the speed made the system unstable again,
> CPU was a rev.6.
> Then during a Sommarhack party in Sweden together with the "Nature
> brothers" we did many tests, we tried exchanging components in our
> systems, the Falcon, memory modules, cards even the CPU, at the end
> all pointed to my CT60, we made sure we have the same firmware, but
> for some reason my CT60 didn't like overclocking and having more than
> one card attached.
> The theory suggested then to explain my CT60 behavior was the
> malfunction of one of the CPLD chips, I don't remember if it was the
> ABE or the SDR. I remember we talked about that there were different
> versions of the same chip, one with lower specification for a property
> that I don't remember but the unit of measure was in nanoseconds,
> there were versions with 20 ns for this property and others with 25
> ns, or some similar values, we speculated on some CT60 being assembled
> with one of the lower version of the chip although marked as a better
> one.
>
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