[ale] Cannot install Linux on new PC

[Keith Hopkins]

Dow Hurst wrote:
> Greg,
> Just got an idea.  You may need to specify at the LILO prompt for the 
> installer the pentium=nomem option since you have an Athlon CPU.  You 
> might have timing problems as well running at rated CPU speeds.  Try 
> clocking down some before giving up.

Hey Dow,

   The pentium=nomem is a fix for cache coherency problems between the cpu and the agp port.  It occurs when the cpu arch (athlons & some models of piii/4) and agp card tries to access the same memory location, and cpu has different data in it's internal cache.  Life gets confusing and everybody starts hanging.    pentium=nomem reverts back to the previously used/small cache page size, to which a "workaround" to the problem exists.  Ok, maybe that wasn't a very technical description...and if you want that, it is/was well documented on the AMD web site and in the kernel archives.  The problem plagues winbloze 2k too during development, but they have a patch 
for it.

-- 
Lost in Tokyo,
   Keith



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