Hello Sparc People,

i'll try to phrase 1 clear question, as i'm stumped as to
what to do next. I fear the grim reaper is stalking my ss5.
It's a bit of a mess.


Can someone advise me if it's most likely to be a hardware or
software problem on my  SS5?



- ram swapping testing etc reveals no clear results.
builds still die. But tests pass. And running each of the 3
single ram SIMMS one at a time alone still had builds die
on each one of them.

- builds like clisp and ecl lisp always die in the same place.
Indicating it's not the hardware, to add more confusion.

- other big builds like xscreensaver will die and just leave
a shell prompt (as in "sh") sitting there in the middle of a
build.  (I have tcsh as default shell) .
This is bizarre as i can see half a dozen make process's
still active on 'top' but they are all sleeping. You have to type
exit at the sh prompt just sitting there to get the whole thing
to unravel. Why it died ? No idea. No messages.


If it is the hardware how do i test it conclusively?
It could be other things apart from ram.
I don't mind shelling out some $$ to replace bits but
I have no idea conclusively what bits.

There must be ways.
Appealing to your expertise, please help.
I am determined to run a good sparc.

You guys may not be able to give a conclisive statement ,
but what steps would you take in this situation?

cheers,
Paul.








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Paul
Australian Bureau Of Meteorology
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"In a world without walls and fences,
who needs windows and gates ?"