Re: Problems with MB IWILL P55TV and AMD K5-PR166

Jeffrey Wiegley (wiegley@usc.edu)
Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:40:08 -0700


Georg Holzknecht wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> when runnig the combination IWILL P55TV (jumpered for a Pentium 166)
> and
> AMD K5-PR166 I encounter some problems: Many segfaults and all kernel
> compilations terminate unsuccessfully.
>
> If the board is jumpered for a Pentium 133 all things work fine.
>
> Are there any known problems/bugs for this combination
> motherboard/processor?
>
> Thank a lot for all information
>
> Georg

For those that care...

The Iwill boards (at least mine which is a P54TSW2) have a problem
with the soldered on cache. The problem will manifest itself when
running the bus at 66Mhz. You will get signal 11's when compiling the
kernel. If you disable the external cache the problem will go away (but
your machines performance will too).

The solution to this problem is to send your board back to Iwill and
they will simply solder on a small foil tape over the circuit traces to
the cache chips. This foil is simply an EMI shield and it worked
perfect for me. Its certainly not the proper solution, which would be a
well designed motherboard in the first place, but it removed my problem
100%.

There is an Iwill authorized motherboard service department in Irvine,
CA I simply walked my board in and out in 10 minutes. I don't have the
address or contact information any more but you can go through the web
page at http://www.iwill.com.tw to find the e-mail address for people. I
used the pacfic rim sales rep., I think, to track down the real people
to call.

So if you are getting signal 11's when compiling the kernel on an Iwill
board I would suggest that you may also have this cache memory problem
which can be fixed.

- Jeff