🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1068@zen.BERKELEY.EDU> c9c-ae@buddy.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Clayton Yee) writes:
>   I have been getting a system error 131 upon cold booting my machine,
>a PC-1 with a color graphics card and a multifunction card.  I have also
>had a few parity 1 and parity 2 errors.  Can anyone tell me what's wrong?


The 131 error is a system board error indicating a problem with the
cassette interface. It should be safe to ignore.
PARITY CHECK 1  means the _hardware_ detected a parity error in the
                RAM _on_the_system_board_.
PARITY CHECK 2  means the hardware detected a similar fault in the
                RAM located on any expansion memory boards.

It's marginally possible that all these problems are being caused by a
flakey DMA chip, which is the big one (same shape as the 8088) that
plugs in near to the power supply, in _front_ of the 8088/8087 sockets.
It's location U35 on the PC board, and is an 8237A-5 chip. It's the
single most common chip failure I've encountered in the old PC-1's,
in fact, it's the only consistent one I've heard of. If all else fails,
it may be worth replacing this chip (for around $30) before sending the
whole board off for work (for lots more than $30).

If you can, test your RAM in someone else's system. When you get BOTH
PARITY CHECK 1 _and_ 2, chances are it's not _really_ your RAM
that's having problems. That'd be sort of like having both rear tires on
your car blow out at once -- unlikely.

Good luck!


-- 

Dave Duchesneau
UUCP:  {hplabs|dual|glacier|lll-crg}!well!micropro!daved