Memory Test and Parity Errors For 6300 Plus

[Mike Ciaraldi]

I want to test the RAM on an AT&T 6300 Plus.
The system comes with a diagnostic disk which includes a RAM test,
but this will only test the memory once and then stop.
I want one that could run for hours, since I suspect I have
an intermittent memory failure.

I tried a program called RAMTEST3 from Brown Bag Software,
which I found on the SIMTEL archives.
This seems to work, but only if I turn off parity checking.
(The manual mentions that some clones need this because
their parity circuitry is different from IBM's).
The program has run for several hours (7000 iterations)
without finding an error, but this presumably is using
only 8 bits in each byte, not the parity bit.

So.....


I'm wondering if anyone has a good RAM test for the 6300 Plus.

Also, I am wondering what happens when a parity error occurs.
An IBM PC responds to the interrupt by printing
PARITY CHECK 1 on the screen and then halting.
We called AT&T and they said the 6300 PLUS just halts.
Does anyone have an interrupt handler that will
give us a good message when a parity error occurs?

All of this came about because the system sometimes halts
while in the middle of Pagemaker.  On some days it is always at the same place,
while on other days it will edit the same document in the same way
with no problem.  So we are trying to see if there is
an intermittent hardware problem.

Thanks for the help....

Mike Ciaraldi
University of Rochester
uucp:  ...rutgers!rochester!ciaraldi
ARPA:  ciaraldi at cs,rochester.edu