what's the temp on that 3000+ ?.

How would i go about checking that? Not much of a hardware person lol

Do you use CGLAGS or any optimiser flags with your compile ?
For the temp you could at least reboot then open the bios settings and look for hardware temp monitor or similar

If I recall correctly
CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CHOST="i686-linux-pc" (or something like that)
CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS
MAKEOPTS="-j2"

This is from memory so there might be some error there however I'm virtually 100% sure that the syntax etc is right on the real make.conf. Nothing too aggressive there right? Maybe its the MAKEOPTS='-j2" but I seem to recall trying without that (I have no idea what it really does except for the fact it has something to do with CPU i think). As for temp, let me reset and check that now. Its wierd though cause it will get through a couple compiles (i think) and then just stop at a random spot.

Lookie what we got here:
-------------------------------------
CPU Temp: 62 C | 145 F
Mobo Temp: 23 C | 73 F

CPU Fan Speed: 3690 RPM
-------------------------------------

I'm not sure what any of that is supposed to be but CPU does look a lot lot higher than motherboard...

EDIT: According to AMD...
Die temperature (max): 85°C
Is it possible that its suddenly spiking up during the compile...would that cause the compile to seg fault or would it cause the CPU to die completly...as in new CPU time.

It seems not very hot, at least, even if it cooled the time you rebooted, it's not like 70/80° C

From man make, the -j2 is to enable 2 commands to run simultaneously, it should not stress your CPU (AMD Athlon xp 3000). The Asus mobos are known to their RAM compatibility issue though...

Did you try to boot with your computer case opened, and try the compile to see if it is a heat problem ?

I tried both cracking open the case a little and completly opening it. I can't imagine it being an overheating issue this case has more fans then i can count on one hand lol. I also tried air blowing the fans to get some of the dust out, still no go. I was on the brinik of buying a massive fan to blow into the comp but decided against it. lol

on my 2800+ xp, i try to keep it around 50 or below ( keep in mind while compiling this temp will likely rise 10 Cel. or so). I had a 3200+ xp that burnt on me ( it was up in the 70's ) this could easily be your problem. crack the case and get the temp down and see if it gets better. In any case, it wouldn't hurt to buy a better heatsink ( they are cheap, look at www.newegg.com) and make sure your case fans are putting airflow correctly through the case ( see amd.com desktop builders guides for illustrations on the correct airflow for athlons's)

EDIT: yeah that max die temp is kill temp. shutdown IIRC is around 80 or so. mine spikes up around 49-50 during compiling and really I'd like to get that down a little ( I'm a little paranoid after my 3200+ experience )

Heat will give you problems every time ( My old athlon-tbird would go haywire at about 45-50 Cel. and I could not compile anything, but bring the temp back down in the 35-40 range and it ran without a hitch).

I'm pretty sure I tried doing it open cased a few days ago and it still didn't work. I'd try again but it stinks cause everytime i try to install Gentoo i need to start from the very beginning and wipe out my Slackware install...and once i find out it doesn't work go back and put Slack on and reconfigure it all...that or go to win xp but who wants that? Do you think keeping the case open will somehow work this time?

Edit: Is there any (free) way to resize my Slack partition like to 50% and keep the data and use the rest to try Gentoo?
Edit: Gonna try QTparted on knoppix cd, see how that turns out, if it works it'll save me a lot of time...i hope.

try lm_sensors and watch your temps. before buying anything, do what you have to do to get the temp down to a normal temperature ( for xp's I'd recommend in the 40's) and see if that allows you to compile gentoo. If that doesn't help, start checking ram and your mobo for faults. keep in mind the bios was reporting the cpu temp at idle, so under loads (games and compiling etc..) that temp will rise a good amount. definitely not good for you to run the 3000xp in the 70's if you want it to last.

What is lm_sensors?
Edit: Just downloaded and it definatly looks just a bit too compicated for me...lets just say i can never get anything that involves the kernel to work :-P lol

it's a mobo sensor reader. it works with i2c ( drivers for the sensors - if your running 2.6 you might already have these modules built, otherwise you can get them from the same place as lm_sensors just be sure you apply the patch against the source ( also available from the same place)).

once you have your sensor modules loaded in, you can run "sensors" to get the temperatures from the sensors on your mobo. also, slack comes with gkrellm which can read the sensor values also and report them back to you graphically.

depending on your kernel, you'll need the kernel-source ( completely configured) to compile both of these.

I also got this error. The problem was that I had 'unrared' the sources in windows pc and then scped it to the linux machine. and comiling the sources there used to give errors in random location sometimes while compiling wireless drivers, or at other times during comiping scsi drivers.

I then copied the tar.bz2 file to the linux machine and untared it using xvfj option and then did make. the kerenel compiled perfectly. I was also thinking about temperature or hardware issues, but this 'windows' habbit was the problem.
I know this thread is pretty old, just posting this in case someone encounters the problem again, he can correct himself.herself.
I love debian :-) ..pretty new to it.
Manoj