[NTLUG:Discuss] Lockup problem

[Gregory A. Edwards]

I've run into 2 hard lockups on my new box.  Both times it locked
completely and required a red switch approach to get it going again.

The box:

  AMD Athlon 650
  128M Crucial ECC Ram
  30G Maxtor HD
  ASUS K7V MB
  Sony CD-RW
  LinkSys 10TX ethernet card (NE2000)
  Diamond Monster MX300 sound card
  Diamond Viper 770 Ultra (AGP Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra)
  Iomega Zip (100M)
  3.5" Floppy

The OS:

  Mandrake 7.1

Install options:

  XFree86 4.0
  128bit encryption option (this includes kernel, netscape, ssh, etc)
  Aureal sound driver

Desktop is KDE

I suspect that it's in my video but it could be in the sound.  The
Aureal Vortex2 (AU8830) driver has a note about DMA hangs on the K7 and
it qualifies that with "some PCI slots".  I assume that is with the
shared slots that some boards have.  My card isn't in a shared slot that
is populated.  I haven't tried moving it yet.

The reason I suspect video is that the 1st time it locked while running
a Quicktime website (sound, graphics, lots of flash and splash) that did
a pretty good job of stressing the multi-media side of this box.  But
the second time it was running kdeslide (I think) which I don't believe
has any sound.  I have not had any problems with general usage apps,
graphic admin tools, CD photos, CD music, netscape (in general), xterms,
etc.

I haven't tried dropping back to XFree 3.3.6 yet.  When XFree 4.0 starts
up it detects the card to be an Nvidia TNT2 and not a TNT2 Ultra.  Could
that make a difference?  I'm using the XFree nv driver now and planned
to load the Nvidia driver.  Could the Nvidia driver help here?

My MB and video card are AGP 4x capable and I have them set to run that
way.  I seem to remember reading somewhere that XFree wasn't 4x capable
but would it matter what XFree thought was out there when the hardware
can outrun the driver, so to speak?

Could this be a Mesa problem?

Any help would be appreciated:)

TIA,
-- 
Greg Edwards
New Age Software, Inc.
http://www.nas-inet.com