Problem with freezing

[SoulReaper]

my friend has been having the wierdest problem with his AMD k6-2 400mhz. Everything freezes on it. including linux. It freezes the most with windows. It can not stay on for over 3-4 hours without freezing. I have tried to change DIMM's, so it's not the ram. I am guessing it's either the motherboard or the CPU now. Any insights?

 

[Guest]

My K6-2 had a problem with freezing for quite a while. Finally it just wouldn't even start any more. The power supply had failed internally. I changed the power supply and it worked fine with no freezing. My guess is a power spike or glitch of some kind caused it to freeze.

 

[Guest]

Back before I upgraded to a Assus K7V and Classic Athlon 750 System, I had a K6-2 500 that would lock up. I figured that it was over heating because I had every PCI slot full.
The devices ranged from a sound card, hard disk controller,
MPG-2 Decoder card, 56K-V90 Modem and a 10/100 NIC. I noticed that leaving the case opened allowed me to run it for a much longer period of time. I tried adding a couple case fans and a turbine slot fan which helped but it still locked up. I finally settled with leaving the case open. When I upgraded my brother recieved my K6-2 500 and shortly afterward started leaving his case open to reduce lock-ups.

The power supply may be the cause, but case ventilation should also be looked into.

With the Athlon, I have never had to leave the case open.
I did have an issue with my GeForce256 DDR and the AGP driver. The latest drivers which enabled AGP 4x would lock up under DirectX and OpenGL. An updated 4 in 1 driver from Via fixed the situation and since then I am running the latest drivers.


*Note: I only experienced crashing once or twice under Win2K, and only when I was playing games like UT and Q3-Demo.

 

[Rop]

Well i would guess at first it is due to Heat. I work in the computer field and build systems for a living as well. And the last batch of K6's we got where not good. The tend to overheat enough to freeze the system. We sent them all back cause of this. I know it is not a normal problem from the K6's but this last batch did in fact have many falky chips.

Check into heat and if it is a new K6 i would recommend taking it back and getting a new chip.


Why do I use LINUX ? Cause its the BEST OS
Why do I use Windows? Cause its the BEST Nintendo..

 

[machow]

Sorry but i think the k6/2 is really not as good as athlon in terms of quality and performance but I do think that the chip might have been overheated or something... My already sold 350MHz k6/2 always crahsed like 2-3 hours. I think that would be ok for a k6/2 to crash 3-4 hours once...


Smart guys are not smart; they only see things in different perspective.
1st <b>member</b>!

 

[SoulReaper]

thanx for the insight thus far....keep it coming. I'd like to see what else it may be. but so far it seems like a heat or a bad chip issue

 

[BrainStorm]

To see if it's a heat problem, let your case open for a while with a domestic fan pointing on it. If it was that, just add a fan as an "intake" at the front of the case and another "pushing" the air out of the case at the back of the case.

Hope that helps...

 

[Guest]

I'm having a similar problem. I've got an ASUS P/I-P55T2P4 system that I upgraded from a Pentium 233 MMX to a K-6-2 500 (but I'm running it at 400MHz because I don't want to overclock the FSB). The system locks up right at the beginning of the helicopter sequence in 3dmark2000 (or a few hours later under normal load). I replaced the power supply and CPU heatsink/fan, but it didn't help. I haven't figured out the problem yet, but you might try running 3dmark2000 (get it from madonion.com) to see if your machine locks up right away. Then you won't have to wait 3-4 hours to see if your problem is gone every time you try something new. Re-Volt (from Acclaim) also causes the machine to lock up almost immediately. In case you're wondering, everything works fine using the original Pentium 233 MMX CPU. Also, this is my second K-6-2 500, so I doubt that the CPU itself is bad.

-ken

 

[Starhawk]

What motherboard do you have? Heat and power are the first possibilities to address, but don't discount firmware, chipset revisions, drivers, and other software. My first K6-2, a 300MHz part, was strangely unstable until I flashed the BIOS on my DFI motherboard. Two years later it is still rock-solid at 333MHz. And the K6-2 500MHz system that I'm using to post this (Asus P5A board) is tweaked and terrific. Are all of your bus master and other mainboard drivers loaded and current? That's important too for Super7 systems. Try a new 4-in-1 if it's a VIA-based board. And how much free resources does Windows have? Usually, though, complete freezes (as opposed to crashes) are related to power/heat or firmware.

 

[Starhawk]

One other thing. If your video card is heating up, it can produce freezes as well. Does it lock up after playing games for a few hours, or just running Windows/Linux apps? If you're gaming, you're back to the heat hypothesis.

 

[Guest]

Yeap, I am agree with other guys. My friend had the same problem in this summer. I thought something with memory, but later we found out that it is Heat problem. Check a temperature from your BIOS (what BIOS do you have?) and see if your CPU temperature is rising?

 

[SoulReaper]

Good point...he does have a voodoo banshee which sux.

 

[Guest]

My old K6 200 froze the first time because the cooler fan didn´t work. After that, it worked ok-ish, but froze every now and then. Now that i have installed an K6-2 400 on an QDI titanium 1b+ mobo with 5*83MHz clock, it works just fine, but i also put in some PC100 instead of PC66 memory then. So maybe the CPU is overheating, or a memory/videocard problem.. did you overclock it?
Try running it with the case panels off for a while.. i needed to do that in the summer because otherwise it would overheat and my mobo would start beeping all the time..

 

[Guest]

The motherboard is having difficulty.
I have a K6-2 300 and a K6-2 400
both systems run extremely stable and I often leave them running for months at a time without reboot
the 300 is in an FIC 503+ motherboard
the 400 is in an epox (can't remember the model)
I'd reccomend looking into picking up an epox board anyway, for the K6-2 they are just about the best you can find.
Also if your motherboard has any integrated components I'd get rid of it immediately, those pieces of junk aren't worth the plastic they are built on. I work at a small OEM and we have more problems with integrated component motherboards than all other problems put together.
Always go with seperate components and if the motherboard has anything built in, don't buy it.
my $.02
good luck and happy hunting.

-Infornography
life as we know it is absurd

 

[Guest]

Well, based on some of the responses to this thread and some other posts elsewhere in this forum, I've tried a few things.

First, I removed my NIC, secondary video card, capture card and sound card, and took out half my RAM. Now 3Dmark2000 runs for nearly a minute before freezing. If I spray canned (cold) air on the CPU, it runs for 2 to 3 minutes. Since I've been running with the case open, and I'm using a PC Power & Cooling power supply (300W) I think my problem lies elsewhere.

Second, I left the machine running all night and all day playing a MIDI file (very low CPU utilization). No lockups.

I'm thinking at this point that under heavy load, perhape the K6-2 500 is drawing more current than the voltage regulator can supply. I'm going to try installing a K6-2+ next, which draws about 33% less power. It will take me a few weeks to do this, but I'll let you know how it turns out.

-ken

 

[Guest]

Sorry for the long delay. I ended up getting a K6-3+ 450 (running at 6x66 = 400MHz, again because I don't want to overclock the FSB beyond 66MHz). Now, 3Dmark2000 runs just fine, as does Re-Volt. I've had the system on for days at a time, and there have been no mysterious lockups.

At this point, I am speculating that my problem was in fact that the voltage regulator on the ASUS P/I-P55T2P4 was not able to provide enough current to run the K6-2 reliably, while lower-power CPUs like the K6-3+ and Pentium MMX work fine.

-ken

 

[Guest]

Hi Ken,
Just a thought, I put a K6-2+ in my ASUS P/I-P55T2P4
a few months ago. Basically following the steps givin
in one of Tom's articles. ( I am assuming you did use
the non-documented voltage settings to increase your
voltage as per the article...you didn't mention it explicitly so I am suggesting just in case.)
However, I experienced a lot of freezing like you explain.
In the end, I found some utilities here
http://www.geocities.com/liamsay/index.html
that you can use in your autoexec. This completely
removed all freezing issues I was having.

-Dale

 

[Guest]

re : I did have an issue with my GeForce256 DDR and the AGP driver. The latest drivers which enabled AGP 4x would lock up under DirectX and OpenGL. An updated 4 in 1 driver from Via fixed the situation and since then I am running the latest drivers.


Was your crashing intermittent lockup anywhere from boot up onwards ? Cos I have that problem and am wondering whether to try switching the via drivers.

===
Do unto others before they do unto you...

 

[SoulReaper]

We actually found the problem with his PC. It's not the chip or the mobo...it's actually his Voodoo banshee. The computer doesn't freeze, the video card just stops responding. Heavy workloads cause it to just stop working. GREAT PRODUCT 3DFX!!!! O'well, it's fixed now.


--SR

 

[Guest]

dalepaton:

Your assumption is correct, I did use the required undocumented jumper settings to lower the voltage from its original 2.8V to 2.0V.

As for UART's utilities, they didn't solve my freezing problem with the K6-2, and the K6-3+ works fine without them, so I haven't been using them. But I suppose I should install them again, to get the write allocation turned on if nothing else.

I remain convinced that in my case, the problem was that the K6-2's peak current draw is too much for the voltage regulator on my motherboard to handle (I think it's over 3 times the maximum draw of the Pentium MMX; the K6-2+ and K6-3+ draw much less).

-ken