[...]

> Hardware is a Gigabyte GA-586 HX board, 512 KB L2-cache, Pentium 133,
> 2x32MB PS/2 RAM (60 ns, EDO). Software is NetBSD 1.2 (config file is
> appended at the end of this message). The machine works fine with
> 2x16MB PS/2 RAM (60 ns, FPM).

Is this a Triton II (430HX) based motherboard?

[...]

> Is it possible that this is a hardware problem, eg. may the RAM be faulty?
> The BIOS tests the RAM ok, and DOS' highmem.sys also finds no errors.

I have had mixed results with the new Triton II boards.

I used to own a Tomcat II... based on whether or not ECC or parity checking
was turned on, NetBSD would hang after either 20 minutes after boot or about
an hour.  My results were even worse under Solaris 2.5.1.  Disabling and 
enabling various "new" Triton II features would cause NetBSD (and any other
operating system I ran) to become very flakey.  I was running the machine
cacheless since the board shipped with a non working UMC made pipeline burst
cache module (never by anything with "UMC" or "Aliance Semiconductor", 
especially if it is a cache part).

The above behavior persisted regardless of the RAM configuration, regardless
of the memory type (EDO/non-EDO), regardless of what PCI cards were installed,
regardless of the BIOS manufacturer (AMI/Award), regardless of how many  CPU's 
I had installed (but that should not have made a diffrence anyway), etc.


Carl