"PANIC" window; memory error

[dph]

I have stepped into an IT role in an office that has an old SGI Indigo 2 with an IRIX system. I've used this system in the past but only as a user, not an administrator. This morning, the monitor has a message that reads:

PANIC: IRIX killed due to Memory Error in SIMM S9 at Physical Address 0xa55eba9 PC: 0x88005940 ep: 0x88212df8
Memory Configuration registers: 0x2f202f30/0x0, Data: 0x43000001/0xe7fa068

Dumping to dev 0x2000011 at block 0, space: 0x27ba pages
Dumping low memory...
Dumping unmapped memory from page 0x4 to page 0x3d5........
Dumping kernal pages..........
Dumping remaining in-use pages..............................
Available dump space depleted.
Dumping page marked free...
Available dump space depleted.
Flushing out buffers
Updating dump header.
Dump complete.
[Press reset to restart the machine.]

Does this mean anything critically bad? If I go ahead and restart the machine, will I run the risk of losing anything? If so, what steps can I take to protect our data?

 

[irixfan]

Welcome to the wonderful world on administration! (I took the same step couple of years ago). I've had similar problems with some 02 workstations. Sometimes it is temporary problem and can be solved simply with a restart. If it repeats there is an error in the memory SIMM and it has to be replaced (or removed). No data on the disk will be lost. Actually, you get some more files (to /var/adm/crash) from the error dumps from the system. See 'man savecore' for more information.
Perhaps someone can give more information more accurate/descriptive?