[wplug] Another OT buggy-hardware post

[Brandon Kuczenski]

On Fri, 17 Mar 2006, Drew from Zhrodague wrote:

>> Thanks for everyone's suggestions, and thanks especially to those people 
>> who can accomodate for the fact that I don't seem to be able to read
>> (Chet) or Google (Jonathan) properly..
>> 
>> The power supply is a new premium low-noise one which is more recent than 
>> the crashing started happening, so I think it's okay.
>> 
>> I dd'ed memtest onto a floppy and ran it overnight at my underclocked speed 
>> (1250 MHz).  It ran for almost 8 hours and reported no errors.  I rebooted 
>> at the proper clockspeed (1666 MHz) and was about to leave it to run all 
>> day when my computer spontaneously shutdown between 20 and 25 minutes in.
>> 
>> Incidentally, memtest reports the processor as a Duron, not an Athlon XP. 
>> /proc/cpuinfo reports:
>> processor       : 0
>> vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
>> cpu family      : 6
>> model           : 8
>> model name      : AMD Athlon(TM) XP 2000+
>> stepping        : 0
>> cpu MHz         : 1222.637
>> ...
>> 
>> My conclusions: heat and the video card are clearly not the problems.  I 
>> think the memory itself is ok.  There are no jumper settings on the mobo 
>> for either CPU or Memory voltage -- just about the only user-configrable 
>> settings are the clock multipliers -- so the problem must be the mobo or 
>> the cpu. Based on comments in this thread, I'm going to buy myself a new 
>> processor.
>
> 	Are you *sure* that heat is not a problem? CPUs generally get hotter 
> under use. As an example, my Athlon 1.4Ghz workstation here has a clogged 
> heatsink, and doesn't cool very well. I can sorta lightl use the machine (nfs 
> host), but if I fire-up my distributed.net client, the thing will shit itself 
> pretty quickly. Ditto if I do anything that is more processor intensive than 
> just sitting there sharing its disk.
>
> 	I have a brand new heatsink/fan combo ready to go, and I'll bet that 
> problem will be solved by swapping them. I'll post my results.
>


I thought it was thermal for a long time.  But the more I learn, the more 
I suspect a defect.

It seems like there are "crash-prone" cpu-intensive tasks and "safe" 
cpu-intensive tasks.  sensors(1) never reports a CPU temperature higher 
than about 51.5 C, even when the computer is working fairly hard... but 
like I said, there are particular running conditions (which I assume must 
exercise different parts of the processor) which are basically guaranteed 
to cause a crash.  Running lame(1) will do it.  Certain XScreensaver hacks 
will do it (XLyap comes to mind), but most won't, even CPU-heavy ones.

I just ran fireworkx(1), one of the XScreensaver hacks that relies on 
hardware graphics acceleration that my AGP card doesn't support, for 12 
minutes:

b at plaza:/tmp$ uptime
  11:38:22 up  1:43,  9 users,  load average: 0.98, 1.05, 0.72

and sensors reports the CPU temperature is 50C and the M/B is 43C.  Those 
seem pretty comfortable based on what I've read and seen.

Of course, then I allowed the computer to rest (CPU temp came down to 47C 
and stayed there) and ran 'lame' for about 5 minutes straight, which has 
reliably caused crashes in the past, and the computer was fine.  So who 
knows?  THe only thing that is absolutely reliable in generating crashes 
is running at the rated clockspeed... and my training has always suggested 
that you "fix the obvious problems and see if the more pernicious ones 
'just go away,' because often they do."

If this hasn't convinced you that temperature is not an issue, let me 
know.  I'd love to hear your thoughts.  Nobody is selling Athlon XP 2000+s 
anymore...

Can I run a processor with a 333MHz FSB on a motherboard with a 266 MHz 
FSB?

-Brandon