PCI on 21164 problems?

["Barrett G. Lyon" <blyon netpr com>]

On my 21164sx motherboard, I am having problems with the PCI bus.  I think
it can explain all the odd crashing problems with syslogd/kswapd and
anything that causes large disk io.  I originally had a PCI network adapter
(Intel pro 10/100 and a DE500 both tested) and I had problems with the
network working fine, then pausing? fine then pausing and resetting the
eth0 device.  I then moved to an ISA 3c509, and that seems to work fine,
except I now have an Adaptec AHA2940UW SCSI Adapter, and I have a feeling
that it is experiencing the same "surge" that I was seeing with the network
cards.  I'm just thinking it does not respond the same way the network
cards did.  After a while it gets worse and worse, until the box has been
up for about 5 days, then when some swap kicks in, the machine crashes with
different errors, sometimes with 'kernel panic swapper can not sync' or
something to that nature.  A day before the system crashes, you can notice
the file system reallllly slow, pauses? vmstat shows no io.. then huge
surges and then nothing.. and so on.  Also its reflected in a  tar, if you
untar a file larger than 5 megs it untars partly, pauses, then continues.

Is there some odd setting in the bios, motherboard, or kernel that I should
know about?  Am I just talking out my ass and totally wrong?  I think a PCI
problem could contribute to most of the odd errors that people get on the
21164sx.  

Let me know what you think.


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Barrett G. Lyon                               PGP Key: http://www.doxx.net/pgp
Data & Network Security Consultant                Fax: 310-737-0196
Network Presence, LLC                           Email: blyon@netpr.com
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