[GeniusPoster]

Guys,

Can anybody recommend a good and preferably free DOS diagnostics utility?

My DOS system crashes appr. once every couple of hours. I thought it might
have something to do with the power supply, so I changed it. Nothing
doing!!!

Thanks,

[PMAC38]

When you say it "Crashes" , does it just freeze up or is an
application failing ? Any error messages ?

[GeniusPoster]

PMAC,

The machine just freezes. It doesn't even allow you to soft boot it (Ctrl+Alt+Delete). I have to use the power or reset buttons to reboot it.

BTW, this is an old, AT, 486 machine, which hosts our voicemail system. I would love to have been able to throw it out and transfer everything to a new machine, were it not for the ISA voice cards and specially configured HD and so on.

The thing is that the machine had been running fine for years, until a few days ago. So they just want to find out what has gone wrong with it, replace it, and get on wiht life. And I'm the lucky one who has been assigned to do this.

[PMAC38]

I have worked with 1 Unix and some DOS voice mail
systems. Several having similar symptoms as yours.
One had bad sectors on the harddisk. The system
would freeze but I was able to Ctrl-Alt-Del it.

One was due to memory failure. After countless hours, I
found it to be temperature related. On the bench, with
the cover open, I could not get it to fail. Close it up and
put it back in the rack and within 1-2 hours it would freeze
like yours. Using a hairdryer I confirmed this. I changed
the memory, cleaned up the fans, and my problem went away.

One other issue I had was a system that had 4 voice input
cards. The voice files were kept in separate directories much
like the old multi-user Dictaphone systems. I found partial files
and cleanup needed in the same one all the time. Hence I found
out it was one of the cards. It would freeze the system and
sometimes I could still reboot and sometimes not.

I still get ask to work on some of these old boxes. The
tools I keep handy are the old Norton Utilites, DOS 2 and 5,
and a couple of urilities from the old Quarterdeck set of
memory tools.

Hopefully this might give you some ideas. If I can offer anything
else, let me know.

PMAC38

[GeniusPoster]

Hi PMAC,

Thanks for sharing your experience and suggestions.

Well, after some digging, I managed to track down a compatible stick of SIMM memory that would work with my machine. It did boot, it did load, it did work... But alas, the system was back to its old ways... About 70 minutes later it had frozen again. And I don't believe that heat is an issue with this particular machine, as the cover is completely removed from the case and the room is not warm.

At this point my main suspect is the voice board. We are running a Stratagy 4.225 voicemail precessing system with its associated card (I believe it's called RDSP). Was this by chance one of the systems you had looked at? How could I go about diagnosing the board and resolving this issue? It's driving everybody crazy and getting the heat for it.

Thanks much in advance for you input.

[PMAC38]

Afraid I have not worked with that one. Many that I have worked with were
multi-channelled. They could accept multiple inputs at the same time. If your
volume permits, could you go in to the configuration utility and stop one channel
at a time. Maybe one of the digital voice controllers is having an issue. If
your unit is a single channel then you may be to a point of switching machines
to see if it is the card or the machine. Just about any machine with an ISA slot
can be formatted to run it. ( I am willing to bet it is an ISA card )
Wish I had more info for you.