Program to track ECC error recovery events?

[pm]

There's another thread on here talking about ECC memory and whether or not it's worth it. The ready answer is "yes, if you are concerned about your data", but does anyone know of a way to track the number of times ECC has recovered from an error? I keep my computers on 24/7 and I have one that has ECC. Is there a way to tell if the ECC is doing me any good? I would think that there's a register in the chipset that would keep track of this information.

 

[BoberFett]

I never figured that was possible. :Q

Unless there are unused pins on standard SDRAM, wouldn't ECC SDRAM would require a higher pinout to get that info to wherever it is you wanted to read it from?

I was under the impression that ECC was pretty much a black box in that respect. You don't know how it works, why it works, or if it works; you just pray that it does.

 

[pm]

I was reading the Intel chipset datasheets and there are number of ways to track them. You can get the chipset to generate an SMI (System Maskable Interrupt, IIRC) or an SCI (System Chipset Interrupt?) and stores a whole bunch of stuff in various chipset registers (the address, the bank, and the device number) and let's you specify single-bit corrected or dual-bit detected.

Unfortunately, Via doesn't seem to allow users to access their datasheets - only OEM's. And, no, this isn't a slam by an Intel employee against Via - it's a mark of irritation by a technically competent user who own's a Via product and wants to read more about it. I think I might be able to write a VB script to check this on my BX board if it's not OS controlled... I'll have to look into it.

A friend of mine who works at HP says that there's a program for the Apollo Pro133 chipset that let's you do track this (which would be perfect), but I can't seem to find it.

 

[pm]

Fired off an email to Via support. We'll see what they say.

Found this page here which talks about 'drivers' for various chipsets and has links to all sorts of useful documentation.

Guess I answered my own question. I'll work on writing a program for Windows which does this. I'll have to see if Via responds to my email, though, because I won't be able to do anything unless I know which registers to read from and how it handles them.

 

[ruckb]

nice link pm!

think I have to install linux !

HAve you found any tool for ECC checking ?

ruckb