DMA (maybe) and tape drive problem (PANIC)

[Jim Morton [ext 237]]

In article <1990Aug20.052225.3371 at jersey>, zaz at jersey (Todd Koeckeritz) writes:
> I have run into a rather hard to solve problem and would appreciate
> any input all you netters might have.  I have a 386 (Mylex MX Revision
> 1.01 25Mhz) motherboard, an Archive VP402 card controlling an Archive
> 150M VP tape drive and an Adaptec ACB-2322B controlling a 300M disk
> all running under Xenix SysV 2.3.2.  The problem I am having is that I
> can write tapes fine (never had a problem here), but sometimes when I
> am reading the tapes I'll panic with a general protection fault or a

I've been meaning to post the final answer to a problem I had about 6
months ago that I posted here. The above problem may or may not have the
same cause...I posted a problem with a Compuadd 320 where the system
paniced when using the floppy drive with the system cache controller on,
but worked fine with the cache controller off. After a *lot* of calls
to Compuadd, they finally admitted that their rev. of the Award BIOS did
not work with their cache controller and Xenix. They sent a Phoenix BIOS
chipset and all has been well ever since...

--
Jim Morton, APPLiX Inc., Westboro, MA
...uunet!applix!jim    jim at applix.com