Processor Upgrades And SCSI Woes

Andy Dodd asks: "OK, this problem is quite strange and I don't know what to make of it. I just replaced my K6-2/300 with a 500 MHz chip, and now my system's reliability has gone way down under Linux. My first thought was that I had a re-marked counterfeit chip, but the crashes are not the random ones I'd expect from a chip that can't handle its clock rate. Under Linux, when I do anything that stresses my SCSI controller in any way, my system is prone to locking up. Starting any application runs a risk of crashing the system (culprits so far include gkrellm, Netscape, and sshd, one offense per app)." (Read on for more info..)

"I'm generally willing to tolerate the occasional crash, as they are rare. But CPU-intensive applications (Cyberlink PowerDVD and Quake 3 under Windows, recompiling apps and encoding MP3s under Linux) cause no trouble whatsoever.

Unfortunately, there are two cases where my system will hang with 100% certainty - fsck dies before completing 10% of my drive, and cdparanoia will always hang the system. If I drop the clock rate down to 400 MHz, everything works fine.

Any idea what's up with this? The correlation between SCSI use and crashes makes no sense to me, but it's most definitely there.

My setup includes: Epox MVP3E-M mobo with latest BIOS (VIA MVP3 chipset), Mylex/BusLogic FlashPoint LW SCSI controller also with latest BIOS, and the aforementioned AMD processor. (BTW, bus speed isn't an issue since both the old and new processors were running at 100MHz FSB.)"