[Groop]FW: [molers] Problem with Pentium III

[Azamin Zainol Abidin]

-----Original Message-----
From: Abdul Muhaimy Shafee [mailto:muhaimy@medical-online.net]
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 10:00 AM
To: MOLers
Subject: [molers] Problem with Pentium III


---deleted---

Problems with Pentium IIIs

This is a little complicated.  Earlier this week, Intel announced that
Pentium III motherboards equipped with something called a "memory
translator hub" (MTH) may be sensitive to system noise, causing your
computer to reboot or crash unexpectedly.  If your Pentium III computer
is affected by this bug, Intel will either issue you a (I assume
partial) refund or replace both your motherboard and your RAM, replacing
your current RAM with 128 Mb of RDRAM (RDRAM is
EXTREMELY expensive RAM).

Whom does this MTH problem affect? [Or is that "who does this affect?" I
keep forgetting the who/whom rule.]  According to Intel, this only
affects people who have Pentium III computers purchased after November
1999.  Our friends at CNET offer a little more detail:

      Only computers containing Intel's 820 chipset, a 133-MHz system
      bus and a Pentium III running at 533 MHz or greater are affected.
      Computers containing Rambus memory do not contain MTHs [and
      therefore are not affected].  PCs with Pentium IIIs running at
      550, 650, 750 or 850 MHz likely do not have MTHs inside [and are
      also not likely to be affected].

Before you breathe a sigh of relief, though, you should know that CNET
is also reporting that "[t]he MTH was incorporated into nearly 1 million
Pentium III computers."  Yikes!

How can you find out if your Pentium III is vulnerable?  Easy!  Intel
has created a MTH Reboot Issue Page at http://www.intel.com/support/mth/

On this page, click on the "Am I Affected" link down at the bottom. This
takes you to second page where you can download a free utility that will
tell you if your Pentium III has an MTH controller.  If it does, you'll
need to contact the company that sold you your computer (a.k.a. your
"point of purchase") to "evaluate your configuration and determine a
solution for your system."

A good place to turn to learn more about the MTH problem in general is
Melanie Austria Farmer's and Michael Kanellos' recent CNET article
"Intel to replace faulty PC motherboards" at
http://news.cnet.com/news//0-1006-200-1849850.html

By the way, if that link doesn't work, go to http://www.news.com/ and
search for MTH.

You should also check out Michael Kanellos' and Ian Fried's "Potential
Pentium III bug easy to diagnose" article at
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-1851832.html

John Spooner at ZDNet News also wrote a wonderful article on the MTH
issue: "Chip noise halts Intel 820 production."  You can find that
article at http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2566782,00.html





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