Re: One for the Experts

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <2r9hqf$ptg@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>,
Paul H Bauer <pbauer@ATHENA.MIT.EDU> wrote:
> 	Tonight I had an interesting thing happen which was very disconcerting.
> After a session using AOL software I became aware that my bram had changed ie.
> I had no Ram disk.

Was the entire BRAM lost, or was it just one parameter (the RAM disk size)?

> This is on a Rom 3 GS with 6.250 meg ram. I proceded to reset the Ram
> disk to 2.016 meg with the remainder for the system and then rebooted
> and got a message that my boot vol on my hard drive was DAMAGED!!! 
> Needless to say this was disturbing as the same message appeared on going
> to a backup hard drive.
> 
> 	After much hair pulling and moaning I resized the Ram disk to
> 2.08 meg e and then the system worked fine. It appears if there is
> more than 4 meg of ram for the system one can get some strange errors.

You certainly shouldn't get battery RAM corruption!

Two big questions: what SCSI card are you using, and what memory card
(or cards)?

The ROM 03 should work fine with a 4 megabyte RAM card (for a total of
5 megabytes) but some cards are not DMA-compatible if you have more
than 4 megabytes installed.  Setting the RAM disk larger prevents the
SCSI card from having to do DMA past the 4 megabyte point, which
avoids the problem.

I need more information...
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand