[mythtv-users] DMA Read errors and inter chipset (Abit BP6Motherboard)

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 04:36:05PM -0600, MythTV wrote:
>Well Murphy came calling today after my 10+ gig recording marathon yesterday
>(recorded constantly from 11am til 6pm)  Now today I can not even record..
>damn I thought I had this licked...
>
>I now get:
>
>Aug 18 04:19:12 mythtv kernel: APIC error on CPU1: 08(08)
>Aug 18 04:19:13 mythtv kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 04(04)

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Abit BP6 motherboard.  I had one of
these for a few years.  It started off just fine, but it gradually degraded in
stability over time.  The APIC errors were very common.  The fact that the
kernel is reporting the error implies that it is an error that was recovered
from.  The APIC system, as I understand it, will generate these error
interrupts when an error occurs, but it will keep retrying until it succeeds.

In my particular case, these became more and more frequent over time.
Eventually, the board became unstable in SMP configurations.  Using a UP
kernel made the board much more stable.

It was a nice idea, but in reality, the BP6 was very poorly engineered with
numerous faults.  Of course, Abit would never admit as much.  Some people got
very lucky (like you), others were mildly lucky (like me).  Still others
barely got a few months out of their BP6's.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Research Assistant, Steward Observatory, U of Arizona
                        johng at as.arizona.edu
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