VAXstation 4000/90 questions
John Klos
I'm now getting back to trying to get my 4000/90 completely happy and as
stable as my 4000/60s. The memory issues have not reappeared after
cleaning all of the SIMMs and SIMM slots with isopropanol. However,
instead of memory soft errors on the serial console, I'm seeing hard
lockups after a day or two.
The things I've checked are power (traded the power supply from a known
good machine, plus it's on a good UPS), memory (swapped all of it with
known good memory from my two 4000/60s), disk, battery backed clock chip,
ethernet transceiver, and I've put a fan over the triac which is between
the memory slots and the optical drive bay (which gets so hot without the
fan it has burned my finger).
The system just locks. I have "options LEDS" compiled in the kernel, so
it's easy to tell that it just stops. The serial console gives nothing and
doesn't respond to a break. At least this is now unrelated to memory, or
at least appears unrelated, since I'm not getting soft memory error
messages on the serial console.
Since hardly anything else is modular and replaceable, the only other
thing I could try was to remove the video card. I suppose I'll know after
a day or two of compiling.
So here are my questions:
1) am I correct in assuming that there's NO software crash that could
cause the system to hang and not drop to the boot ROM chevron prompt from
a break?
2) has anyone seen issues like this with similar machines, and if so, was
the root of the problem discovered?
3) does anyone have suggestions about anything else to check or try?
4) I think the only thing I haven't tried is replacing the heat sink
compound on the CPU. Any thoughts on whether this could be an overheating
CPU issue?
5) unrelated to the crashing, how does one tell the difference between a
4000/90 and a 4000/90a? The casing doesn't seem to match the guts. Does
someone have the specific results from a NetBSD benchmark on either a
4000/90 or a 4000/90a, or both?
Thanks!
John Klos
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Johnny Billquist
> Hi, VAX fans,
[...]
> So here are my questions:
>
> 1) am I correct in assuming that there's NO software crash that could
> cause the system to hang and not drop to the boot ROM chevron prompt
> from a break?
I would believe so, yes.
> 2) has anyone seen issues like this with similar machines, and if so,
> was the root of the problem discovered?
The only times I've heard of something similar, it was overheating.
> 3) does anyone have suggestions about anything else to check or try?
>
> 4) I think the only thing I haven't tried is replacing the heat sink
> compound on the CPU. Any thoughts on whether this could be an
> overheating CPU issue?
To me, overheating definitely sounds like a possibility.
> 5) unrelated to the crashing, how does one tell the difference between a
> 4000/90 and a 4000/90a? The casing doesn't seem to match the guts. Does
> someone have the specific results from a NetBSD benchmark on either a
> 4000/90 or a 4000/90a, or both?
Well, the difference between the machines, as far as I know, is the
speed. So I'd look at the output of a SHOW CONFIG in the boot monitor,
or check the hardware.
I don't have any benchmarks numbers, unfortunately. And only a /90 to
play with.
Johnny
Isildur
running with just a subset of modules at a time?
just curious, ive seen these kind of failures in various machines
when some parts of memory were subtly by definitely toast.
On Fri, 27 May 2011, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 18:43:59 -0700
> From: Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se>
> To: John Klos <jo...@ziaspace.com>
> Cc: port...@NetBSD.org
> Subject: Re: VAXstation 4000/90 questions
Jan-Benedict Glaw
> So here are my questions:
>
> 1) am I correct in assuming that there's NO software crash that
> could cause the system to hang and not drop to the boot ROM chevron
> prompt from a break?
Wrong. I managed to get that state several times while hacking Linux
on VAX, with probably any desktop-sized models (inkluding the smaller
3100, as well as 4000/60, /90, /90a and /96).
> 4) I think the only thing I haven't tried is replacing the heat sink
> compound on the CPU. Any thoughts on whether this could be an
> overheating CPU issue?
Could be. But I've never ever had seen the heat sinks to get that warm
that I thought about thermal problems.
> 5) unrelated to the crashing, how does one tell the difference
> between a 4000/90 and a 4000/90a? The casing doesn't seem to match
> the guts. Does someone have the specific results from a NetBSD
> benchmark on either a 4000/90 or a 4000/90a, or both?
The /90a (12ns = 83MHz) is a bit faster than the /90 (14ns =
74.43MHz). The numbers are taken from Wikipedia.
MfG, JBG
--
Jan-Benedict Glaw jbg...@lug-owl.de +49-172-7608481
Signature of: 23:53 <@jbglaw> So, ich kletter' jetzt mal ins Bett.
the second : 23:57 <@jever2> .oO( kletter ..., hat er noch Gitter vorm Bett, wie früher meine Kinder?)
00:00 <@jbglaw> jever2: *patsch*
00:01 <@jever2> *aua*, wofür, Gedanken sind frei!
00:02 <@jbglaw> Nee, freie Gedanken, die sind seit 1984 doch aus!
00:03 <@jever2> 1984? ich bin erst seit 1985 verheiratet!
Thor Lancelot Simon
> On Sat, 2011-05-28 01:36:28 +0000, John Klos <jo...@ziaspace.com> wrote:
>
> > 4) I think the only thing I haven't tried is replacing the heat sink
> > compound on the CPU. Any thoughts on whether this could be an
> > overheating CPU issue?
>
> Could be. But I've never ever had seen the heat sinks to get that warm
> that I thought about thermal problems.
If you have a thermal problem due to bad conduction between the processor
and sink, the problem *is exactly* that the sink won't get warm.
Thor
Jan-Benedict Glaw
> On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 04:55:04PM +0200, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:
> >
> > > 4) I think the only thing I haven't tried is replacing the heat sink
> > > compound on the CPU. Any thoughts on whether this could be an
> > > overheating CPU issue?
> >
> > Could be. But I've never ever had seen the heat sinks to get that warm
> > that I thought about thermal problems.
>
> and sink, the problem *is exactly* that the sink won't get warm.
Sure--but the hangs went away once the bugs were fixed. The machines
were stable otherwise (eg. with NetBSD.)