Again: Linux 2.4.x and AMD Athlon

Hello all,

Some more experiences with AMD and X-related crashes:
-> I've an Athlon 800 on a Epox EP7KXA Mobo (686A) with 512MB RAM and no nVIDIA graphics card, but ATI XPERT 2000.

I've got similar problems with 2.4.x-kernels and I would be very glad, if the cause could be found. The problem is more than half of a year old!
I posted it in this list some time ago (more than once) - nobody seemed to be interested. I posted it 2 times to the X bug list - no interest.

But as I can see now, the problem seems to be greater than I thoght. Therefore I write here some of my latest experiences:

# X 4.1 (if I remember right) and 2.4.6 -> a lot off solid crashes (even pinging the machine didn't work) while starting X, no matter if DRI was turned on or off; no matter if agp was loaded or not. Unuseable.

# X-CVS and 2.4.6ac2 eg. is working fine - with DRI turned on - I didn't test it without DRI.

# Before, I tried to run X 4.1 and ac-Kernels. They have been crashing too as described above. That's why I'm using X CVS.

# If I try to run X CVS and vanilla 2.4.6, I'm getting blinking screens after some restarts of X or after long working with X. It's unuseable, too.

For me, it seems to be not a nVIDIA related problem.

The question for me is:
where are the differences between X CVS / X 4.1 and Vanilla / ac-patches
- and there combinations.
Why is the combination 2.4.6ac2 or the ac-patches before and X CVS (about 4 weeks old; not DRI-CVS; but they have been merged as far as I know) working for me without any problems?

Did you try this combination too? It would bee interersting if it would work for you too!

Regards,
Andreas Hartmann

Hello,

I have a data point that may be of some value. I have 3 athlon systems running a variety of FreeBSD/NetBSD/Linux and I experience rock solid stability, even with K7 optimized 2.4 kernels. The things that seem to be different for me are that:
1) I always use scsi disk subsystems (adaptec or symbios).
2) I do not use nvidia graphics cards.

My boards are Abit (kt7raid, kt7) and Asus (a7v). I have taken no special power supply precautions beyond using AMD certified units. I'm very curious as to why I have had such an excellent experience (I'm unlikely to purchase an intel cpu at this point), even though I use the dreaded via chipsets.

I hope that someone finds this useful. I'd be happy to supply configs or other details if desired.

skd