Re: EMC Help

Matt Shaver wrote:

>
> From: "Matt Shaver" <mshaver@...>
>
> > From: William Scalione <scalione@...>
> > Ok, here are the results.
> >
> > Tried the P-166 chip in place of the cyrix with 32 Meg mem. - no help
>
> I talked with Fred Proctor briefly about your problem and he said that if all
> of your other parameters ('mem=' in lilo.conf and the base address specified
> in the run and ini files) are correct (and I believe yours were), his best
> guess was that something could've gone wrong with the rt patch or in the
> kernel compile. He recommended doing exactly what you did in the next
> sentence.
>
> > Reloaded the whole works linux, rt stuff, emc using your?, Tim's?
> > script.
>
> Tim's! (giving credit where it is well deserved)
>
> > EMC actually loaded. no more segmentation faults. finally.
> > have not hooked up my machine to it yet, but it really runs.
>
> Did you do this with the Intel cpu?

Yes

>
> > Tried the cyrix chip again just for fun. - Damn those segmentation
> > faults.
> > maybe something in the way cyrix addresses memory?
>
> So, your system worked after you brought it up with the Intel chip, but seg
> faulted with the Cyrix processor and was then OK again when you put the Intel
> chip back in?

Correct

>
> If this is the case, I think that the BIOS on your motherboard isn't
> configuring the special Cyrix control register(s) correctly for use with
> Linux (or the tricky shared memory interface scheme used by rtlinux and EMC).
> Perhaps something went wrong with the original kernel compile or some other
> important thing got corrupted on disk... (I have to explain the initial
> failure of the Intel cpu somehow!)
>
> Anyway, I don't even like the sound of the ARR (Address Region Registers)
> that are in the Cyrix cpu, but perhaps you could get it to work by further
> patching your kernel with files from:
>
> http://www.tux.org/~balsa/linux/cyrix/
>
> Or, it may be that the Cyrix chip will never work with the shared memory
> interface.
>
> If it was me, I'd keep the Intel chip and move on to the next intractable
> problem!

Was not even considering putting the cyrix chip back in.

The cost of a used Intel chip = $20.00

The cost of 2 weeks in the nuthouse brought
on by trying to figure out how to patch
linux to work with that chip = $2000.00


Thanks again
Bill
scalione@...