Speed vs. Stability...

[elfs]

The beautiful new laptop (monikered "Kusanagi") that Omaha bought me for Yule is going back to the dealers. There's either a problem with the video card or a short on the motherboard; either way, the box is way too unstable for me to use it reliably. I've done everything I can; locked the interrupts, switched video card interfaces, activated the shadow frame buffer register (which supposedly "works around" the video card lockup), and instituted on-demand CPU frequency control so that the box runs cooler when on battery power. Nothing seems to help, the lockups continue completely at random and have nothing to do with heat: it happens when the box is cool, it happens when I'm in console mode.

I could stand it if it were once a week or so, but not every day. It's sad; Kusanagi is arguably six times faster than Lain ever was, but if I can't rely on it back to the shop it goes.

Comments

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

Well... It could be that that particular unit is the problem. Maybe it got a flakey motherboard, or a stressed chip, or was dropped in assembly or something. A straight replacement for the same model, since you seem to like it, might solve the problems.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

All of the T23s on the market right now are lease end-of-lifers; they're refurbished boxes that were once leased out by large provisioning companies like IDT to large corporations. So the success with any one is about the same as that with a used leaser automobile: sometimes, the lease holder took care of it, and sometimes not. I'm still in the 90-day warranty period; I'm hoping the seller will honor it easily and without argument.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

Usually random crashes are RAM problems, IME, though video card problems do run a close second. You might try running memcheck86 - the standalone version, not the one that runs in userspace - before giving up on the box as totally useless.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

There were two memory chips in Kusanagi: the one she came with stock, and a new one I had bought at Fry's. I installed Memtest86 and checked it out: sure enough, the one she came with stock consistently failed on the third pattern test (all 1's) around the 12% mark. I took it out and re-ran the test with the new memory: works perfectly. I'll leave it in and see if it's stable. If it is... *sigh* I wonder if the reseller will take the dead memory back and replace it without wanting the entire box?

[ladyerin.livejournal.com]

much like the fable of the tortoise and hare, slow and steady does win the race....however, flaky hardware is a real pain! and spead sure is nice.