Hi,
The speed with which this list works is truly amazing. I printed a copy
of my message and before I got back from the printer I had already
received the first answers...
I asked if the many 'CPU Machine Check Errors' messages I found
in /var/adm/messages indicated a hardware problem and if yes what
part of the machine could be causing this problem (because we
have seen this errors before and about every part of the machine
has already been replaced at least once)
I received quite different responses on this question ranging from
* We've had a 2100 doing the same thing since Jan 1998. We just ignore
it. It hasn't caused any real problems.
to
* It's a hardware error. You have some flaky ECC memory. Get the bad
memory
fixed. It's not the CPU board, it's memory.
Although the error doesn't seem to result in any real problems
I don't think I can ignore an error occuring about once every
minute (especially not if our other Alpha's don't have this
problem)
Someone also suggested that heat may be a problem.
I know that this machine in the past has had at least
once a problem with heat or dust (I don't know for sure
because that was before I was responsible for the machine)
so maybe this is something to look into...
I received two more messages indicating a hardware error:
* This erroris quite common, and on a well
loaded system you will see several of these. Sometimes, they run
rampant,
in which case you should do the following steps to correct the
problem:
1) power off box (implicitly re-initializes memory)
if problems persist:
2) call DEC, have them re-seat or replace memory
and
* We have had a similar problem, and swapping the motherboard in our
2100a
cleared up the problem (after memory and cpu's were swapped).
Since the machine is still under waranty I will ask Digital to replace
the memory (again) and hope that this time the error will disappear for
good.
Thanks to
Dr. Thomas P. Blinn
John Speno
Ron Bowman
Warren, John H.
Cory Erickson
Thanks
Bart.
--
Bart Rousseau, Ph.D. student
University of Antwerp - Dep. of Chemistry
Structural Chemistry - Quantum Chemistry
http://sch-www.uia.ac.be/struct/quantum/
Received on Tue Mar 09 1999 - 16:55:33 NZDT