On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 08:48:51 -0500, Mehul N. Sanghvi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I wanted to test the RAM and make > sure the memory is good.
There is a Debian package called sysutils that includes a memtest utility but I have not tried it. > The 13 GB IBM is just sitting around useless > because I seem to get data corruption, although from reading at > http://lowendmac.com/ it seems that the corruption might be due > to the fact that I have a Rev 1. B&W which has a bad IDE controller > chip. I, too, would like to know a way to evaluate my IDE controller -- I have a PowerMac 9600 with an IDE controller added and I can install Debian just fine IF I use ext2 filesystems, but if I try to use ext3 it has a tendency to corrupt everything. I'm thinking it's probably not ext3 per se, but probably the kernel is trying to use a higher DMA mode or maybe the controller just cannot handle the throughput. I resolved a similar problem on an old Compaq Pentium 200MMX system by installing 80-wire IDE cables. On the PowerMac, this improved the situation but did not completely resolve it.
