weird crashes on Phenom II X4

DOS specific questions.
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DamageX
Posts: 130
Joined: Nov 21, 2009 8:42

weird crashes on Phenom II X4

Post by DamageX »

In one of my PCs I swapped out an Athlon II X2 CPU for a Phenom II X4. All other hardware remains unchanged. Then I noticed that FB DOS programs are no longer working. A very simple "hello world" program will run but when using graphics SCREEN it fails at some point...

Code: Select all

' this program executes
? "wtf"
sleep

Code: Select all

' this program clears the screen and immediately returns to command line, as expected
screen 13
? "wtf"

Code: Select all

' this program freezes at a black screen, and the PC needs to be reset
screen 13
? "wtf"
sleep
Other DOS programs seem to run fine (eg. DOOM, Genecyst, SEA, FBC itself). Windows is fine. Tried latest FBC as well as old one (.23)

The DOS environment is in fact Windows 98 booted to command prompt only. (no emulation/virtualization)

My copy of CWSDPMI.EXE is dated 1997/10/19 and is 20,473 bytes (is it the latest?)
DamageX
Posts: 130
Joined: Nov 21, 2009 8:42

Re: weird crashes on Phenom II X4

Post by DamageX »

There is a newer CWSDPMI, one from 2000 and one from 2010. I tried those, with no change. I also tried disabling CPU cache in the BIOS (again, no change).

Then I put the other CPU back in and things work again. However, there are still some GPFs when moving the mouse. Without the mouse driver being loaded there are no problems. I suspect the mouse driver may have been the problem. (But I'm not inclined to swap CPUs again at the moment to confirm.)
Laaca
Posts: 27
Joined: Dec 31, 2007 14:24

Re: weird crashes on Phenom II X4

Post by Laaca »

Hm, interresting. Does the Phenom II X4 integrate some chipset functionality (like in southbridge/northbridge circuits) just on the chip itself? Because it sound like some kind of A20 gate problem.
You should more experiment with various memory setups. By the way - does it occur if you run your samples from running Win98?
rugxulo
Posts: 219
Joined: Jun 30, 2006 5:31
Location: Usono (aka, USA)
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Re: weird crashes on Phenom II X4

Post by rugxulo »

DamageX wrote: Then I put the other CPU back in and things work again. However, there are still some GPFs when moving the mouse. Without the mouse driver being loaded there are no problems. I suspect the mouse driver may have been the problem. (But I'm not inclined to swap CPUs again at the moment to confirm.)
According to Wikipedia, it was the original Phenom that had a TLB bug, so my first hunch was wrong here.

You mention mouse driver, which one are you using? Try CuteMouse 2.1b4: http://cutemouse.sourceforge.net/downlo ... se21b4.zip

Or just update your BIOS (assuming a newer version exists), maybe that will help??
DamageX
Posts: 130
Joined: Nov 21, 2009 8:42

Re: weird crashes on Phenom II X4

Post by DamageX »

I was using MouseWare 6.30 that I've had since ancient times. I tried CTMOUSE and that resulted in crashes as well. I guess the real problem is the PS/2 mouse emulation in the BIOS (the system has a USB mouse). I tried disconnecting the USB mouse and connecting a serial mouse instead and then FB programs ran fine with either driver.
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