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Ok they got it fixed pretty quick, here's what lspci -vv shows.

root_lspci.txt is attached.

Thanks again

Sorry, I messed the last post up. here's the correct file.

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Hi,

Will not be able to try this until tomorrow, will let you know when I have.

regards

Hi

Your lspci print shows that the chip comes under the ICH8 umbrellaThere are 7 other ICH8 sub types defined in pci_ids.h now, so I have included them into the table in smi-module.c

This compiles fine with the magma sources I already have installed and I have attached the resulting rtai-smi.ko module
(remove the .txt from the download and replace with .ko the forum only accepts certain types of upload)

Disclaimer
This module is not warranted safe or of use for anything.

I cannot test it, because I do not have a suitable MB, other than it appears to have been successfully compiled as a module for the 2.6.32-122 kernel.

Best case scenario is that it will recognise your chipset and work.

Neutral outcome, it will not load or it will load and will not recognise your chipset.

Worst case scenario, it will load, but the registers it alters are different in your machine to the ICH8_4 chipset it apparently worked with previously and it will cause damage or render it a 'brick'.

The choice as to whether to try it is yours alone.

regards This attachment is hidden for guests. Please log in or register to see it.

Thanks, I completely understand and its my problem if it damages the PC. Which it didnt.
Here's what the error log produced, we are much closer I think.

insmod: error inserting '/usr/realtime-2.6.32-122-rtai/modules/rtai_smi.ko': -1 Invalid module format

and

rtai_smi: version magic '2.6.32-RTAI SMP preempt mod_unload CORE2 ' should be '2.6.32-122-rtai SMP mod_unload 586TSC

Here's the whole emc2 startup debug file

Thank you very much for helping with this. This attachment is hidden for guests. Please log in or register to see it.
I dont know if it makes a difference or not but I dont have the isolcpus kernel mod running and I didnt shut 1 CPU off in the BIOS but I'll try that now. I did a fresh install last night and just doing the updates now.

Hi

The problem is exact compatibility between the 2 systems (yours and mine) and the rtai used.

I think I have now got it sorted using the other rtai libraries

Attached as a .zip this time in case any corruption occurred in the download, albeit it was byte length identical.

I am going to be away for a while, so won't be able to continue with it for that period, albeit I can monitor this thread.

If it still says the format is invalid, you could try compiling on your machine.

Ensure you have build-essentials package on your machine
Get the sources for kernel 2.6.32 and put in /usr/src along with the headers for 2.6.32-122 and 2.6.32-122-rtai
Copy the smi-module.c, rtai-wrappers.h and Makefile from the zip into /usr/src
cd to /usr/src and compile using make

good luck This attachment is hidden for guests. Please log in or register to see it.

I think the default for the .rtai-config from Kconfig is for 2 cores anyway so I would leave it as it is.

The error message is to do with differences in between the rtai build, the second module I built should not have this.

regards

Thanks again, I will try the second module and if it fails I will follow your instructions and compile a module. It will be a great learning experience. Thank you for all your help. I will post results so you can follow along.

Cheers
Craig

Well your second module loaded, here is whats in the dmesg


[ 632.553735] RTAI: Intel chipset found, enabling SMI workaround.
[ 632.553749] SMI configuration has been set, mask used = 1.
[ 632.637028] config string '0x0378'
[ 655.921065] 23331: ERROR: Unexpected realtime delay: check dmesg for details.
[ 655.921072]
[ 655.921073] In recent history there were
[ 655.921075] 3378376, 3405678, 3378087, 3378155, and 3378359
[ 655.921077] elapsed clocks between calls to the motion controller.
[ 655.921082] This time, there were 4925359 which is so anomalously
[ 655.921094] large that it probably signifies a problem with your
[ 655.921097] realtime configuration. For the rest of this run of
[ 655.921099] EMC, this message will be suppressed.

I guess I'll try and compile a module but since yours worked mine will do the same thing.

Thanks
Craig

Hi

I'm back now, any joy with this?

As you said, the module loaded OK so there is no need to try compiling it yourself. The previous errors were just because I used a different flavour of rtai libraries and the version check was not as required.

What we don't know is whether this fix works for other ICH8 chips, there might be good reason why only ICH8_4 is specified, but it was worth a try.

Probably need to run without rtai-smi and evaluate the spikes, then run with it and see if the spikes have been suppressed.

What caused this RTAI error may be the module itself or may be something else.
You should have had an error like this every time you ran on the 32 second spike, but it is only output once and can be missed.

It might be worth trying the isolcpus=1 route and then loading the modified rtai-smi to see what happens.
I doubt the original MBs targeted by this module had dual core processor support.

If this still fails, well it was worth a try. You might have to consign that computer to mundane duties and consider an Intel Atom 525 Mini ITX MB which has been extensively tested and does work very well, as well as being very cheap.

regards