<kpneal@pobox.com> (Kevin P. Neal) writes:

> unexpected machine check
> 
> mces = 0x1
> vector = 0x670
> param = 0xfffffc0000006000
> pc = 0x120005444
> ra = 0x1200056d8
> curproc = 0xfffffc00010d67b8
> 
> pid = 12646, comm = gzip
> 
> panic: machine check
> Stopped in gzip at Debugger+0x4: ret zero,(ra)

What kind of machine? I've been getting these a lot on my AlphaStation
200 (4/233), and I'm reluctantly concluding that it's from damaged
hardware, probably the system board (I didn't get them at all before
accidentally leaving the machine on through the first day or so of the
massive heat wave this summer).

> When it dumped my SCSI chain crapped out (I've been sick all week, have
> all the parts needed to upgrade, and haven't been able to) so I only got
> about a third of the dump. That's not enough to get a backtrace out of
> gdb. 

The backtrace wouldn't be very interesting; the panic is triggered by
the asynchronous machine check interrupt. I'm told that all the
information needed to interpret the machine check is in the
mces/vector/param data, but the actual interpretation is some kind of
Digital Unix^WTru64 state secret. 

        - Nathan