I have recently gotten a Pentium II system (CPU, M/B, Case) and promptly
discovered that compatibility has gone out to breakfast, lunch and tea.
Many of my DOS applications freeze, develop run-time errors, trigger QEMM
exceptions, reboot the computer, and so forth.  Most any program
attempting graphics beyond 600x800 fails one way or another.

When running Linux, all seems well until I try to run X-Windows, an
annoying necessity when almost every web site other than mine is unusable
without a graphic browser, at which point the screen blanks (Diamond
Stealth64 VRAM card) and that is all she wrote.  I can put the machine
into an organized shutdown with the three-finger-salute (CTRL-ALT-DEL) to
get video back, through the expedient of re-booting.  (On Linux, the CAD
sequence is equivalent to root running 'shutdown now -r'.)

Even Windows 3.1, which is toast when I get gimp running, is not entirely
happy with the new setup.  Anyone here know of any tricks for making the
P2 act like an upgrade?  If I can't get around this, the system goes back,
no amount of speed can compensate for my critical software  not working.

Some information from the boot screen: Award BIOS v4.51PGM

AX6L R1.30 Nov.18.1997 AOpen

15 responses total.

Well, I've been playing with QEMM issues a little too.  One very important
thing is to run the OPTIMIZE program again, since the high memory optimization
may be much different even between 2 486's.  

I did that much, first thing, before I tested any of the software in any
other way, I've changed motherboards often enough to have learned that.
On top of which, I booted the unit without any memory management at all,
and the few programs which A) would run without such management and B) had
failed before, continued to fail, the difference being that the very few
programs that had thrown QEMM errors before simply hung the machine this
time.  For obvious reasons I could not test several of my regular programs
this way.

This may be more of a BIOS issue than with the PII, though.  At my office,
a customer reported problems where we had none (with a fairly heavy DOS
program, QEMM, and DesqView doing multitasking).

Question:  Why are you running DOS on a pentium II?  
I'll answer your linux question.  X Windows and Diamond don't get along. 
Your problem isn't the PII, it's the Diamond.  If you had a Matrox, for
example, your X Windows would run fine.  (I run FreeBSD on a PII MP system,
and I had to take out my Diamond AGP card and replace it with a Matrox to get
X Windows to run.)

There are a suprising number of DOS legacy systems out there.  Not just
samebody still running WordStar, but serious business software.  For instance,
my company does warehouse inventory and shipping systems, and we used to do
them on DOS (works OK, not as hard to administer as UNIX for non-geek
warehouse workers).  So now we are seeing customers with an old system
upgrading to newer, much faster hardware, but not wanting to replace $30k+
heavily customized software.

The PII has some serious problems with Linux, according to somebody I work
with who was messing around with it.  It doesn't have as much cache as the
Pentium Pro, and therefore is significantly slower for Linux than the Pentium
Pro is.

I'd say switch to FreeBSD.  It's working great, even on MP, for me.  In
general, I prefer linux, but if linux isn't working on PII, then I'd say go
with FreeBSD.

I just had a thought.  Could you try compiling the kernel for penitum rather
than pentium pro?  That might work if the difference is the cache.  Pentium
had even less than PII.

It's an interesting possiblity.  I'll have to try it at some point.  At this
point, though, the PII machines have all been taken by the NT department,
since they do NT well.

(Note, my FreeBSD kernel that's running so well is compiled for Pentium, not
Pro.)

Re#3: I have now considered that possibility (BIOS), if the replacement
board does not fix the problem, I'll see if I can get a different board.
After thinking about it for a bit, the fact that Linux does everything but
Video correctly led me to suspect the BIOS, as Linux doesn't use the bios
once the kernel gets loaded.  (The previously functioning graphics mode is
still aggravating, though.)

Re:#4:  The whole purpose of getting a computer was to get things done,
GUIS are a thing I avoid unless the specific task at hand requires it.
The PII was a pass-through item from a computer store, so I just decided
to upgrade, even DOS programs can benefit from speed.
On the other issue, the combination was running, albeit with a few
glitches, before the swap, using a Pentium 133.

Re:#6:  Well, its' faster than I had by a serious margin, I can live with
it, if I can make it work.

Re: #8, My kernel is compiled for a plain Pentium, so if there is an issue
there vs. a Pro, I won't notice.

Since scott essentially described my DOS situation as working in a
situation he has seen, I will try the replacement board, then if it does
the same thing, I'll get a different board altogether.

Thanks for the comments.  I was wondering if I'd just gone loopy.

(Random observation, a compute intensive task is now running faster than a
linear clock-multiplier would account for.  The raw clock difference is
2.5 times faster, the task in question is running a little more than 5
times faster.  Probably the MMX.)

        If you get it running right are you interested in selling the 133 and
beard ?

Re#12: No, I am planning to accumulate some more components and set it up
in the basement as a server.  I'm planning to learn a lot more about
networks, and having a 'victim' computer where crashes affect only me
would help greatly.

How does one run optimize?  I just put a new p166 in my computer & it sounds
like something I should do.

Optimize can mean different things.  Optimize is a program that comes with
QEMM can do a first-pass memory analysis, but you still have to tweak the
results.  I know of no other use of a program named optimize.  In a
general sense, optimizing can just mean fiddling with your settings until
you find what works.

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