[plug] [OT-ish?] Need help diagnosing unstable computer

[Dirk Modrow]

There are major Memory problems with the Nforce 2 chip sets only some ram 
will run properly some will cause lockups its kind of a timing issue too. 
However try the latest ASUS bios failing that I found Apacer Ram seems to 
go OK with some forms of Nforce 2 chip sets alternatively there is a link 
of approcved ram on the nvidia web page but i cant find it again. What 
brand is your ram ?

Dirk

At 07:42 PM 7/08/2003, you wrote:
>G'day all,
>
>Apologies for what is probably an off-topic message, but I'm hoping that
>some of the PLUG hardware experts can help me out here...
>
>Last weekend I upgraded my home computer; while it was initially a pain
>to get going I thought I'd ended up with a stable system as it hasn't
>crashed all week ... *cue eerie music* ... until today, where it has
>locked up hard four times in the last few hours.
>
>I'm reasonably sure that this is a hardware issue - the machine didn't
>respond to Ctrl-Alt-{Backspace,Delete} or SysRq-B, and the keyboard
>lights weren't doing the kernel panic thing.  The crashes seem to be
>occurring more-or-less randomly.  (I don't have The Other OS installed
>to make a comparison w.r.t. stability so it may well be a software
>issue.)
>
>Anyway, I'm not sure where to start looking for potential problems; for
>the record, the new components were:
>
>- Nforce 2 motherboard (Asus A7N8X)
>- Athlon XP 2600
>- 2x 512mb DDR 2700 (passed Memtest86 on Monday, although I didn't leave the
>   test on for very long, and this doesn't sound like a RAM issue)
>- Radeon 9200
>- 19" monitor (this shouldn't affect things but it means that I'm now
>   running at a higher screen resolution and may be stressing things out
>   more / tickling XFree bugs)
>
>Ob-on-topic: Plus I'm using a new kernel version - 2.4.21 with preempt
>and low-latency patches.  (Compiled with gcc 3.3.1 in Debian sid,
>although there have been some posts on debian-devel lately which suggest
>that this is not a good combination... on the other hand I've been using
>the same kernel+gcc version on another machine for a few weeks and it
>has been perfectly stable.)
>
>Another random observation: has anyone else noticed that the DVI
>connector with a DVI-VGA adapter has a poor picture quality at high
>resolution (>1152x864) compared to the VGA connector on the same card?
>I'm seeing a slight "flickering" or "wobbling" of vertical lines - I
>don't think it's refresh rate related, and not really awful, but
>noticeably when compared to the other monitor.  And worse, XFree seems
>to insist on using the DVI output as the 'primary' (left-hand) head. :(
>
>adv-THANKS-ance,
>
>Cameron.