On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 08:14:22AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
 [...]
> ("lost interrupt") every so often on my IDE device (though it never
> seems to actually cause a problem other than a 60-second delay), and 2)
> my network card goes down after a few minutes of use.

I don't remember seeing that, but my USB port would die at random times,
requiring a reboot.  This is not good when you have a USB keyboard (only).
(And no other system convenient to ssh from.)  "Reboot" can then equate
to "power button".


> I pulled an old crappy -- but supported -- PCI realtek from another
> machine and slapped it in this box.  Worked for awhile, then got a bunch
> of watchdog errors about rtk0 on the console.  (The on-board nvidia
> device is not supported in NetBSD)

Depends on what "a bunch" is.  And how bad the consequences are.

I believe that I had something like that with my system when I had IOAPIC
turned on.  Once the watchdogs started to hit, performance went to
near-zero.  (When the watchdog timeout happened, every 10 seconds(?),
the system would receive one packet.  It would otherwise basically
freeze its network connection on the rtk0.)

As much as people say bad things about RealTek, I've got a few and
*none* have ever behaved that badly.

I am using that same RealTek card pretty happily now, with IOAPIC
turned off.  (In fact, it seems to be marginally better than
an Intel EtherExpress (fxp) card in the same machine.  That card
was pretty lousy-to-unusable with IOAPIC.  With IOAPIC off, it's
okay but a little prone to occasional hiccups---moreso than the
rtk.)

The irony is that the rtk card cost $0 after a mailin rebate.  (^&


> I am hoping at this point that I have the APIC problem you described.
> However, with an unreliable network connection and hard disk, combined
> with the fact that I've never built any part of the NetBSD base system
> before, I'm not really sure that I'll be able to build a new kernel :-)

It's not hard if you have the sources.  You might find it easier to cross-
build if you're getting too much pain from your basic system.

You might also find it worthwhile to try running NetBSD/i386 instead,
at least for building a custom kernel.  I don't think that I've tried
installing it, but have at least booted a 1.6 (not even 1.6.1; (^&)
NetBSD/i386 CD.  It looked healthy up to the point that I tried it.


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/