I have a 5000/200 which has internal compiler errors, and probably
all the other failures that you mentioned below.  I have swapped memory
over and over with no change.  I moved the boot disk to a 5000/125 and
the compiler worked ok.  I think it must be a problem in the kernel,
although Jonathan Stone has suggested a faulty motherboard or cache memory.
I won't be able to test this theory for a week.

>>>>>
>Content-Length: 1292
>
>> Kim G. S. \yhus wrote:
>> > I have successfully installed NetBSD pmax 1.3.1 on my DecStation 3100.
>> 
>>   Congrats!
>
>Thank you. Now, if I only could use it to compile my programs...
>
>> > However, primes crashes, gcc get internal errors, and gzip often
>> > fail decompressing, and ftp often gives faulty transfer. All sufficiently
>> > big systems fail.
>> 
>>   Yeah, my 3100 dies mysteriously as well.  It panics occasionally (usually
>> right before starting sh when booting single-user) with an error that I don't
>> have handy at the moment (something like "ktlbmiss").  I haven't
>> investigated yet, though.
>
>Hmmm. That could be a memory problem too. Perhaps some of the gurus could
>make a kernel that reported memory errors on the console? Just so we
>know what the problem is. It would be even better if it printed the
>address, or memory bank, so the faulty memory could be removed.
>And, how do one change kernels on pmax anyway? I tried changing
>"/netbsd", from 1.2 to 1.3, but that stopped booting altogether.
>
>It could of course be interesting to make the memory correcting system
>work, but it is the chicken and egg problem: no chichen & no egg,
>can't compile, probably because of faulty memory, and therefore
>can't check if it is a memory problem, or make kernel errordetecting.