On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 02:46:05PM -0500, John Ruschmeyer wrote:
> Recently, I picked up a SparcSTATION Classic to play with. It arrived
> with a humble configuration of 16/400. As a test, I installed a base
> load of 1.6 from CD and it installed and appeared to run with no
> problems.
> 
> Since my plan was to take the Classic to the unsupported configuration
> of 128mb of RAM, I purchased 2 32mb parity SIMMS (8x36, 60ns) from eBay
> and installed them along with the original 16mb of RAM. This gave me
> 80mb of RAM which appeared to work fine with the previous minimal 1.6
> installation.
> 
> Next, I installed a 4GB Seagate drive and went to reinstall 1.6 on the
> new drive. Everything went fine until the package installation when it
> dumped core after installing several packages. A subsequent attempt to
> install a more minimal set of packages also died similarly.
> 
> At first blush, it appears that I'm introduced some kind of instability
> into my system, either with the RAM or with the SCSI drive. Before I go
> tearing the box apart, though, I'm wondering if this sounds familiar to
> anyone and whether anyone has any advice? 
> 
> Specifically, a couple of quick questions about the Classic:
> 
> 1) Anyone else using 32mb SIMMS in the first bank? Any reason they won't
> work with the 4mb SIMMS?
> 2) Does the internal drive need to be terminated? It currently is not.
> (My experience is with the SS2 which isn't and with the SS20 where it is
> automatic.)
> 3) Any known things to check for which might introduce random core dumps
> from the installer? (This sounds like another recent thread, but that
> was on an SS2, as I recall.)

I've seen random cores from installer, on sparc and other systems, on
otherwise know-good hardware. It looks like it's a problem with pax, rather
than with hardware.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 23 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--