Re: VAXstation 3100/m76 stray interrupt

[Antonio Carlini <a.carlini%ntlworld.com@localhost>]

On 16/08/16 21:14, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> I would suggest running VMS on the box for a while, and try to stress 
> the memory subsystem a lot. VMS have excellent error logging and 
> management, so if you have any problems, you should be able to get 
> more details that way. There is also built in tests in the machine, 
> that could be used. But you'll need to find the manual to work out 
> which tests to run. Maybe bitsavers have them, I haven't checked.

I had a VS3100/76 many years ago (still have it in fact!) that would 
exhibit [correctable?] memory errors when things got warm (i.e. in the 
summer).

This was when I was in DEC so with a bit of hunting I found the 
description of the problem. IIRC there was an issue with the 74LS243 bus 
transceivers.
If you had a mainboard that had a particular batch of a particular 
manufacturer's variant you were likely to be susceptible to the issue.
I'm reasonably sure that I only saw correctable errors and I only saw 
those because I looked in the error log. But it was a long while ago
so there may have been the odd crash too.

Anyway, it's entirely possible that NetBSD doesn't know what to do with 
the interrupt reporting a memory error.

So perhaps you ran NetBSD on a warmer day?

Or perhaps it is something else entirely?

Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
arcarlini%iee.org@localhost