🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4l3to0$d44@usenet2.interramp.com>,
ir003870@interramp.com (Billy Ko) says:

>I would think that one of the original OS/2 Engineers and someone whose life 
>revolves around troubleshooting OS/2 worldwide would know what they are 
>talking about.

There's also a good chance that they are choosing their words carefully to
avoid support nightmares- there's a lot of hardware out there, and a lot
of people who don't know enough about their machines to give them enough
detail to get them into more trouble.

>"A TRAP0002 error is a hardware error and is usually directly related to
>memory."

In the contect of memory, it's an NMI (non-maskable interrupt) trap caused
by the parity detection circitry determining that what it stored in that 
location isn't what it's reading out.

>Mismatched memory can often cause these kinds of errors.  Your computer might
>have a variety of SIMMs that WERE PRODUCED BY DIFFERENT MANUFACTURERS OR
>THAT OPERATE AT DIFFERENT SPEEDS.

Notice use of the words "often" and "might".

>One thing that I haven't asked is... where did you learn YOUR facts?

I started off as a hardware designer. I've done memory system design.

I've also put together at least 100 systems for various clients, and in the
last 3 years since I've started using OS/2, fully 30% of those systems have
run OS/2, on various motherboards, with several different BIOS', and memory
of varying speeds, and different manufacturers. The main machine I now do my
OS/2 development work on is a 3-year old MB with 16MB of <somebody's> 70ns 30-
pin DRAM, and 16MB of <someone else's> 60ns 30-pin DRAM. I have my BIOS config
options hand-selected as far as the machine will tolerate, and it has never
trapped due to bad memory (normally TRAPs 2 or 3).

I will bet my bank account that all these alleged "mismatched memory" and
"different speeds" problems are due to *the BIOS being set improperly*, and
not due to who or what the manufacturer is, the speed of the memory, or
anything else like that. 

>I am showing ample evidence to support my claims, along with some creditable 
>people who back up my claims.

I have to be suspicious of *any* "evidence" by *anyone* who makes the
outrageous claim that "OS/2 measures the speed of memory in the first bank
and will run the rest of the machine at that speed" as I have seen reported
here as a "fact". Ludicrous.

OS/2 does not, in fact *can not*, "measure the speed of RAM and run the 
memory at that speed". All OS/2 or *any* other OS (be it DOS, NT, *NIX)
can do is expect that when it tells the CPU to "go out and get me memory
location XYZ", that the MB will *get* location "XYZ" without having to 
generate a parity trap (TRAP 0002), or return bad data (which leads to 
TRAP 3, D, and E mostly). That's all. It's up to your motherboard, and
provided you have your CMOS options set properly *to not expect to
say "The data is valid, send it to the CPU" before that is actually true*,
you will not get traps (on good memory) no matter *where* it came from.

>All you do is argue and refute my claims, but do nothing to support yours.  

See above.
I have hard-earned empirical evidence that tells me what I should know.

	-Kenny

-- 
Kenneth R. Crudup, Unix & OS/2 Software Consultant, Scott County Consulting
kenny@panix.com		CI$: 75032,3044	  +1 617 524 5929/4949 Home/Office
16 Plainfield St, Boston, MA 02130-3633	  +1 617 983 9410      Fax
OS/2 box: pkenny.tiac.net (when I'm online) Get Warp-ed! OS/2 3.0 is here NOW!