Re: XY and Memory Weirdness

[Harmon Seaver hseaver@xxxxxxxx]

Stephen A. Carter wrote:

> In the case you describe, though, some of the instability you
> experienced might be due to running OS/2 with the external CPU cache
> enabled. Warp takes care of that kind of caching automatically, so
> the BIOS settings for external caching should always be off.
> (Though it's perfectly fine and probably advisable to leave internal
> caching enabled, if the system supports it.)

  Don't know where you get this from -- haven't seen anything of the
sort anywhere else, certainly not in the Warp readmes, etc. There was a
suggestion in OS/2 2.0 or 2.1 that you disable external cache just
during install, also set system speed to slow, etc. but that hasn't been
the case with any newer versions.
  I think you are confusing the external cache with turning off the
video and main bios shadowing, something you definitly want to do for
both Warp and unix. Disabling L2 definitely makes my system slower under
all OS. Besides, the most serious instability I was experiencing was
under just plain good old DOS. XY4 will crash everytime under Dos with
my L2 cache enabled.

>
> If you leave external caching on, Warp is sometimes robust enough to
> overcome it with nothing worse than slightly draggy system
> performance (because the system is being forced to do the same thing
> twice, once in hardware and once in software). Often enough, though,
> redundant cacching leads to general system strangeness as well as a
> truly amazing range of trap errors and other IPEs. But I've come to

  Gee, that's not my experience at all. Every motherboard I've used
before this one has always had the external cache on, and OS/2 was rock
steady and fast.
  Anyway, I think XY has a serious problem (dare we say bug?) in
respect to memory handling, if something like a defective memory chip
can cause bizarre things like not being able to load a postscript driver
(and I tried several different ones also) or making the screen (under
DOS) turn into a flashing kalidescope.


--
Harmon Seaver hseaver@xxxxxxxx hseaver@xxxxxxxx
=======================================================================
The fundamental delusion of humanity is that I am in here -- and you
are out there.
=======================================================================
Copyright, Harmon F. Seaver, 1997. License to distribute this post is
available to Microsoft for US$1,000 per instance, or local equivalent.
=======================================================================