PAE-SMP kernel generates NMI (PCI bus errors)

[Klaus Robert Suetterlin]

Hi all,

I have a legacy system --- 4xXeon (PIII, 700MHz, 2MB cache), 16GB ECC 
RAM and 300GB Harddisk on an ICP Vortex Raid Controller --- which I 
tried to bring from RedHat6 to something more current and supported. 
(Un)Fortunately the only system that wanted to install on the machine is 
FreeBSD6.

When I use a non-SMP kernel either with or without PAE everything works ok.
When I use a SMP non-PAE kernel everything works ok, too.

When I use a SMP+PAE kernel the system starts throwing NMIs (most likely 
due to PCI system bus errors, which is the only error reporting 
activated in BIOS) until the system finally freezes (which is most 
likely when the system event log of the server is full).

I can give a lot more diagnostics to anyone interested in solving this, 
but I need a little handholding.

Regards, Robert S