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Coppermine Bug Prevents... Booting?
mircea writes "Apparently, a problem with the wafers resulted in a PIII bug that prevents some machines from booting. ZDNet has the story. Dell has stopped shipping Optiplex GX110. So, what happens when you combine a PIII and a i820 chipset? " Let's be honest, how often do you boot anyway? I mean, its only gotta work once, right? *grin*
Because after all, if there's one thing you gotta do before shipping a finished product, it's turning it on once or twice.
Intel is always putting out crap. They had the same thing happen in their mobil chipsets not too long ago. I'll only buy AMD,
Wherever you are, there you are.
"No good will come of this," I said. "Ruination and doom."
"We don't need it any more; the system is too sophisticated for that."
"And when something goes wrong??? How will you boot. "
"We've solved it. go away."
"Ruination. Doom."
And with that, the barbarians removed the front panel and all the switches that came with it, leaving us to the mercy of the machine as to whether or not it would boot.
hawk, who really wants his front panels back
"Other PC makers did not immediately return calls from ZDNN"
Maybe it's a ploy to get folks to stay off their computers and get some fresh air.
:)
I can dream, can't I?
The chip race is actually hurting us instead of helping us. Personally I perfer my chips in the form of chocolate mixed with batter and baked awhile.
Off topic, but puzzling:
There was a story just a few hours ago about Staples filing a civil suit against an unknown cracker. The cracker put an Office Depot ad on the staples site. Where did the story go?! It isn't on the older pages, it isn't on the search engine.
Ryan
It's good to see that booting up is not part of Intel's QA process since I'm sure that would really slow down the marketing and shipment of new, faster tracking devices ... err I mean processors.
Jeez, how slack can you get?!?
We just got five of them in on Tuesday. I am not one of the lucky few to get one of them...
:)
Me: "No sir, you can;t have your new computer."
My boss: "Why not?"
Me: "ZDNet says they might not boot. You may have to push the power button a second time. Dell even stopped shipping the systems."
My Boss: "Oh, wow! Can we get it fixed?"
Me: "I'll start working on it right away!"
Me: Goes and installs Unreal Tournament on brand new 733Mhz desktop!
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
Not necessarily. I'm at college and so my computer is in my room. At night the fan keeps me awake and I turn off the computer. No matter what os I use the machine is gonna be booted once a day.
/.ers are all rabid zealots.
Seriously guys, it's comments like this that contribute to the belief that
Learn proper syntax? ;)
I fear problems like this. That's why I only use hardware that has established a record of reliability, like my 486/66. Gotta watch out for those newfangled processor bugs, like the Pentium Floating Point mantissa handling bug! If you need more speed just overclock your supercooled 486.
Now, what's the big problem? You notice this as soon as you try and boot up the machine. It won't work, you return it. I admit that's more trouble than a consumer would have to go through and I know it out of experience because I once had a PC that wouldn't go further than the BIOS more than 9 out of 10 times.
Face it: I'd much rather have a product that doesn't work from the beginning so I can return it than a product that stops working after a short while. Then you are really in trouble.
On the other hand.. if this passes quality ensurance labs, what else has and will? Anyone care to speculate? (without naughty remarks about that other OS, please, I'm more interested in hardware flaws on my network and in my house)
If you read the story, you'll note that the bug requires pushing the power button twice in some cases. Personally, that's a bug I could deal with (and I wouldn't mind having a 700Mhz Coppermine chip in my machine, so if anyone wants to send me a defective one on the Slot 1 card...).
On the other hand, it does show that Intel still has some problems, and I'd be leery of paying full price for a defective chip because they won't mention what the root of the problem is.
Slashdot crashed and burned. Too bad, as I found it a rather entertaining story.
To summarize to those who missed it, Staples is filing a lawsuit against an unknown hacker who hacked their site. See an article on it here.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
AMD could have some serious fun marketing this.. I'm sure everyone remembers the hoopla surrounding the floating point bug a few years back, and this seems to be a much larger issue than that, depending on the amount of Coppermines that are affected. AMD should .. um .. enlighten the general computer-buying public to this if they have any sense.
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
Sounds like we have our first Linux only chip. Boots once and that's it. Perfect for Linux but would never work for windows :)
Actually, I recently had 9 days of uptime with Win2k before deciding to reboot to Linux so I could run Ethereal...that's enough for my desktop.
Then again, my 486-based server box, running Linux, has been up for over three months.
Pre-Pentium chips had plenty of bugs (oops...errata) as well check them out here.
This problem is not nearly as severe as the fdiv bug. That bug gave you incorrect results. This one means that sometimes you have to push the power button twice. Not a big deal.
/peter
Since then, "Windows Compatibility Enhancements" have been discussed and will be introduced, just as soon as the engineers stop laughing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, you workstation user, the big problem is that a lot of these fast boxes will be servers. When the power goes out it is nice to have the server reboot itself when the power comes back on. If the server does not reboot itself then a human has to find out and come touch the machine.
Bottom line: get a sense of humor, please!
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I think we should be at least glad that the Pentium IIIE CPU/VC820 motherboard reboot issue was caught very early in the production cycle.
.INF files in Windows 98 SE so it properly worked with the PIIX4E (Intel 82371EB) chipset for ACPI Plug and Play/power management operations.
Earlier this year, when Windows 98 Second Edition was released, not a few people complained about the system not shutting down. Microsoft kind of ignored it until Intel told them that the problem existed on the SE440BX-2 motherboard running any Slot 1 CPU. That got Microsoft into action and the problem was cured by 1) Intel revving a new veresion of the flash BIOS for the SE440BX-2 motherboard and 2) Microsoft providing a 520 KB patch file that updated a number of
Believe me, that Windows 98 SE problem got not a few unhappy folks on the phone (I was working in tech support for a computer company at that time and some of them were literally swearing at ME).
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Put it back! It was more interesting than another office suite review. It had the proper mix of security holes and legal issues to put the slashdot conspiracy engine into high gear.
Ryan
Let it blow! :)
I live in the dorms too. Nothing like three computers to drown out the "noises" from next door.
Ryan
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
My 286 became fried when I tried to add a really cool self-thought-up cooling system to it. Did not help that I tried modifying the chip to be able to multi-task though.
so the article says that this "glitch" (not a bug, those are bad...) anyway, this glitch only occurs in mobile P3 chips, yet dell stops shipment on desktop 'puters.
think about it.
and wouldn't an adequate test be to INSTALL an os on it?
-red
It doesn't really prevent booting. By their statements it merely requires the power be pushed again. In most cases not that difficult. Really it isn't. Even for servers. (At least here our servers are supposed to be manually inspected after any unforseen power outage anyways.) Plus its never even been seen in the field aparently. So it may take a very bizarre set of circumstances to even occur.
On the other hand this really is bad PR. IIRC Intel took a bit of a hit for the Pentium bug. This is also gonna hurt probably. It also speaks very poorly of Intel's QA department. Even if it wasn't their fault this kind of thing shouldn't be allowed to get into the public's hands.
-cpd
There are some products tht you can just never turn off. My zip drive is one of those good old school external kinds that you just leave on. I had a teacher that talked about a bunch of old printers never having a off switch- but he actually smoked chalk sticks.
You leave your desktop system on all the time? Why don't you show some consideration for the environment and stop using electricity when you don't need it? They're throwing more coal in the boilers because of people like you.
And no, contributing to distributed.net is not worth it.
Of course if people had actually read the story before shouting "Down with Intel, buy AMD they never have problems with their cpu" or "Hur hur dem windowz luzerz have it tough" They'd realize that no customers have so far reported this problem. It cropped up during a lab test and nowhere else (at the moment) Also in the event that this does happen to you, the solution is simple, hit the power button one more time and it will boot.
I was unfortunate enough to be working for a high level Intel employee who was always getting us hardware before it's release. And at one point he got me a mother board and a hefty CPU that had on board everything were talking the network card the modem the sound card and yes the i820.. installing and OS on it went with by with no major problems or popping/exploding sounds. When I rebooted (thanks to windows) I had the i820 cause such major problems that I happly went back to my pentium 166 without ever complaining.. it was that bad when I finally did get it back up it was slow as hell and had constant issues of all types.. Intel has recently become to infatuated with defeating AMD that it tries to hop on to every band wagon to try to make more money.. they took a shot at 3D accelerators.. total mess.. Websites.. come one who ever returns to some of those web outfitter sites? and now even a PDA (which will be annouced soon)... If intel stuck to CPUS and network cards they would have far better products..
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
Yeah, I agree that the floating pt bug was a larger technical issue, but ... and the
there was really no way that anyone without a simple knowledge of
computers could understand it, whereas I think just about everyone can
understand that it is a problem that you push the power button
computer doesnt come on, and it's Intel's fault.
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
From the article:
"The bug has not been found in mobile Pentium III chips, according to Intel."
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Calling someone a poor "luser" because they are exercising freedom of choice by choosing Windblows is surely a sign is arrogance. No wonder most people don't take Linux seriously.
Thanks to concerned netizens like you, I contemplated just passin up Linux as an alternative to Microsoft's monument to capitalism at its worst. Thanks for getting the information out that most of the people in the world are losers(short of you blandest, of course;-)).
And please don't post this as being off topic, tking into account that blandest's post was devoted 75% to articulating how Windows users are "lusers", and he has a rating of 1. He is on topic? What is with this? Maybe we should turn Slashdot form a news center to an anti-Windows propaganda factory? How many people (especially Windows users) will take it seriously after that change? Remember, reach out to the people, don't ostrasize them!
Question - Do penguins carry automatics?
-Windows loser slowly, but surely, migrating to Redhat Linux 6.
I'm so glad these flawed chips have been shipping since october 25th. God forbid they follow Motorola's lead and have a good q&a group that finds flaws before the product ships. Then again, I guess it was pretty stupid for Motorola to delay shipment of the G4. They make the chips for Apple, and apple is the enemy. Apple bad. 4.5M rc5 keys/sec on a G4/400 using beta d.net client == bad.
Or maybe I'm just cheap...
"God does not play dice with the universe." -Albert Einstein
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Every processor sold is generally sent through two layers of testing, with random samples (fulfilling a statistical thing I'd rather not try to recall) going through even longer testing. There is a trade off -- the longer you test, the less processors go out the door. The shorter, the more chance you have off failure.
The first level would be as soon as you have viable silicon, you'd do your burn-in, and test the parts before breaking them into individual pieces. This filters out the total junk. This process simulates booting several times.
The second stage involves the finished product in a simulated system environment, running at shipping speeds. This is where they get the ability to 'bin' parts based on how they perform. This is typically done at temperatures beyond anything you'd see in the system level, to give some safety. This part typically involves booting up operating systems.
A longer test, on statistical sampling, would probably involve many applications, over a multi-hour period. (How many people overclocked their processors only to have something like Quake or Winbench fail -- it's a similar approach, run a lot of varied code.
While I don't have inside knowledge on this, I would speculate that it would have to (a) very rare, (b) only happens in a certain environment, eg, chipset or motherboard. I wonder if there is some significance to the term "glitch", which does have an engineering meaning.
It's almost a shame that Rob Collins has appearantly moved on, it would have been interesting to see his speculation on this.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
...tking into account that blandest's post was devoted 75% to articulating how Windows users are "lusers", and he has a rating of 1.
Well, just loggin in got him the 1
..best solution ? ;-P
Amplify "noises" and broadcast over campus
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It probably is a big deal if you are using that computer as a server. I do know that they mentioned that this bug has only revealed itself in portable computers. Yet if such a thing happened to chips found in servers...
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Sorry, I am a Slashdot newbie. I forgot. It just pisses me off!
Here's the deal. I was getting an order together today to order 11 of the Optiplex GX110s referenced in the article. I called my Dell representative. He hadn't heard about this, so he called his supervisor. His supervisor had heard about the story, but hadn't received any official word from Dell.
Man, I'm glad I saw that article. Any delay in shipping would have put my balls in a sling. I'm supposed to get confirmation from Dell shortly about the official answer from Dell. I'll post here when I get it.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Hmmm. Seems like what we have here is a little slip up by the giant.
I'll bet we see many more of these now they are #2.
Into Windows, that is. I get about a 40% chance of Windows locking up (hard, no Ctrl-Alt-Del, no working NumLock even) on the first splash screen when I try to boot.
But I doubt it's a CPU problem; Linux never seems to encounter it.
I wouldn't worry so much if Windows failed to boot 100% of the time... but 40%? You'd think success or failure would at least be deterministic.
Will likely be an Athlon based PC. Intel is just having a few too many issues, and AMD has proven to me that they are capable of producing very competitive (and even faster) hardware. Intel's adoption of the proprietary Rambus technology is also something I'm not very fond of, in light of the i820 problems. As it is, the bandwidth of Rambus doesn't help as much as you'd think because of the greater latency than SDRAM, and smaller width of the bus (Rambus only 16-bit vs. 64-bit).
Not a big deal? These new Coppermine processors are to be installed in servers. What happens when you have a power 'blink' just too long for the UPS, or you're remote administering the machine and force a reboot? THE SERVER DOESN'T COME BACK UP. The system not coming up is FAR more tragic than a non-fatal fdiv bug. Why? I have to get out of bed in the wee hours of the morning, drive an hour, drink lots of coffee on the way, and press the power button again. All because some idiot paid a premium for on Intel's rushed-to-market 2nd place processor instead of buying a Athlon. If the system doesn't reliably power up, I don't want it or any of it's like brethren.
.sig: Now legally binding!
...really blows goats.
Rambust: 'Might' be faster...costs 5X as much for *maybe* 5% boost LOL!
CC820: The 'memory translator hub' makes i820 a good margin SLOWER THAN BX when used with sdram. WTF!!! They must have thrown it together at the last second, when they realized no one in a SANE STATE OF MIND would spend $700-1000 for 128mb of Rambust when even DDR266 would cost less.
Intel sez: "But But But bu bu but use i840 and 2 channels of rambust for a server. Then you'll see how good it is!" Suuuuure. Show me a i840 board I can BUY, even thought officially i840 was introduced 1 month BEFORE i820. At least a $1400 layout for 256mb of freaking ram. The server downstairs has 2gb of Reg ECC PC100 right now on a GX board, and uses every last drop of it. I could probably buy TWO of them for the JUST cost of populating ONE server with rambust to 2gb!!!
BTW, any idea if it would happen on say...Apollo 133a boards? (VIA PC133 AGP4X)
I'd love an athlon, but don't feel like soldering very much. I hope someone hurries up and mass produces those cpu attachment cards. That and waiting for KX133 woudl be great...cmon DDRsdram! Hurry up so we can all piss on rambust for real.
Intel, feeling the pressure from AMD, releases a shoddy and under-tested product? Tell me it ain't so! And this differs from their previous releases, how? At least this time they can use the AMD excuse. In the past their shoddy and under-tested products had no excuse at all. Between them Microsoft and Intel are responsible for setting PC Users' quality expectations so low that any moron can peddle just about any piss-poor programming on the market indefinitely and expect to get away with it. It'd be nice to see them take a good hard dive.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The bug was found in the Optiplex series, Dell's high end desktop machines. The article states that the bug WAS NOT found in the portable chips. Additionally, these processors are also offered in their server line. I hope a few made it out the door, too. Intel needs a spanking for a stupid bug.
.sig: Now legally binding!
On the other hand, the 64-bit Alpha processor is still young, but old enough to be proven in the field. I'm wondering.
I'd like to grab a big Alpha-based muti-processor box with at least a gig of RAM and an external RAID unit with several hundred gigs of storage, all running Alpha Linux. I'm still a bit nervous about Compaq's future plans for the chip though.
Unfortunately, every single vendor and VAR I talk to actually laughs at me and asks me questions like "Can I ask you why you are not considering an industry standard NT/Intel-based solution?" and "Can you really count on Linux to survive the next few years? Those socialist coders are going to get bored and figure out they can make more money in the real world eventually." (actual conversations) :-(
Amazing, $200,000 and no one wants to help me spend it or at least listen to what I need instead of selling me their NT-based turnkey product. :(
It's no wonder Intel and Microsoft are #1 in the world. If you are not very thick-skinned, you get beaten into submission. It reminds me of the old days when getting approval to buy anything but a S/370 based IBM mainframe or S/36 box was near impossible.
of course it would have a ups.
Pull out a calculator though. 20 servers upstairs from me. How much $$$ would it take to give them all 1 hour or MORE of runtime? Take a gander at what a 16kW diesel generator runs for. $100k+. Right now the main battery they use would last long enough to fire it up. (Hint: Those $100k generators don't start on a dime) Since they are load sharing servers anyway, I'd rather that they do what they do right now during blackouts: shutdown some then reboot later...theres always a couple machines running, and save the ups power.
Lets put it this way...hopefully for intel the Coppermine xeons aren't affected, or we won't be shelling out for Quad 700+s anytime soon to replace some of the Quads PPro 200s. (Already repalced some quad 166s for Quad 400s)
I think it's time we need another "slashdot" thread just to discuss the growing flaws of the slashdot moderation system and etc. I'll list the ones off the top of my head:
* Stories get rejected for unknown reasons, only to show up again a day later.
(maybe rejected stories should be reviewed somewhere, so we can moderate the storie back up to be posted?)
* On the other hand, there are "new" stories that link to the same article as that other "new" story one month ago. How is linking to an article 9 days ago considered "news"? (IBM porting Linux to S/390, for example)
(have another queue that shows "approved" stories - members can go in and moderate interesting stories up, and repeated or dull stories down)
* news guys that are inserting too much of their own biased opinion into the news stories, shifting the opinion of the comments before anything gets posted! For example, I'm am on the verge of ignoring a certain section on slashdot, because one news guy is frequently jumping the gun on My Rights Online, ie. how a game software developer is tracking me down with my video card model. I appreciate the intention of that section (which is why i haven't dropped it yet), but is it really necessary for the article to acuse the developer having "unconvincing explanations", then later give some half-assed retraction with "oh, this isn't a big deal really, I just didn't really think before I gave out my conspiracy theory.
There are many more problems I (and I presume many of us) have with the current system. We don't want to bitch and moan, we just want a dedicated thread where we can all give out positive criticisms.
This will probably be moderated down, but I really hope malda/hemos/roblimo and etc. will see this.
Try using it in an actual server enviroment and set Windows NT to Re-boot when it blue screens (and you know it will) and then wonder why you are getting paged at 3am because 3rd shift can't access a server that contains critical information.
YOU have to get up, drive in to work, walk in the server room, and power off and power it back on again? Do this a few times and I bet that little problem of pressing the button twice suddenly becomes a major pain in the ass to deal with. Oh sure you could tell someone to do it for you, but what if you have 20 servers in the server room all the same? Are they gonna power off the right one? Shesh.
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work. --John G. Pollard
I too wish the RAM fabs would hurry up with DDR memory... it seem like a much more useful product than RDRAM - lower latency and more than adequate bandwidth. Even "PC-200" memory would be more than enough for 99% of users. PS: My 'dream' motherboard would be a twin-slot/socket A, 3xDDR DIMM slots, AGP4x, 5 PCI, no ISA. Hopefully Asus or Supermicro will oblidge soon....
I hope they start dumping these chips at really low prices. I don't care if I have to push power twice, if I get a 750 for 50$ then I'm happy.
called money is a potental problem. of course AMD would love to go nuts with this, but right now I believe the company has roughly -$100 million a year to work with.(or was it per quarter? I don't remember for sute)
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
In other news, superstar car maker Gee Em was caught in its biggest engineering gaffe yet, turning out some of their latest line of automobiles without gas tanks or working steering wheels.
"I don't know how this happened," remarks one shocked engineer, who wishes to keep his name anonymous, "We tested and retested, ran computer simulations, all to no avail. I'm quite frankly shocked that this didn't come out in our tests with live drivers."
In Gee Em's official press release, the company's president says laughingly, "Oops. Don't we look stupid?"
Disclaimer to the stupid: The preceding is a fictional story. Any resemblance to the blunders of any corporate entity living or dead is PURELY coincidental.
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
>Maybe we should turn Slashdot form a news center
>to an anti-Windows propaganda factory?
Wait a minute... You mean it isn't already?!?
3 words
:)
ADVANCED POWER MANAGEMENT
10 minutes after I leave the only thing left running is the processor fan.
-Erik-
It's really fun when the RA does it, because then, if you have a good microphone you got some bargaining ground the next time you want him/her to disappear from the hall for a few hours.. :)
Having mp3's of it on the network shared works VERY well.
-Erik-
It is mentioned that Linux is so stable, etc., and that people have incredible uptimes and such. I would love to have incredible uptimes and such, but being relatively new to Linux, I love to play with my kernel (doesn't that sound dirty?), which always requires a reboot. Does anyone have a way around this? This would be a really nice thing for me to be able to do, but from my limited system knowledge, it strikes me as an impossible dream....
FREE ADVERTISING.
Every time there's a media extravaganza about some bug (or "errata", as they like to call it), Intel's sales go up. Hell, after the fdiv debacle Intel practically became a household word.
Maybe AMD should try the same thing.
Of course, then I wouldn't buy their products, either.
-----------------------
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
But I have a few DEC Multia's with the Alpha 21066 chip. Not fast. But even they do run Linux, OpenBSD and Compq Tru64 Unix. So you can always point to Tru64 when The Suits get nervous about Free Software.
My problem with Alphas is their power consumption. No, not just `cuz the 21066 draws 17W and has no powersavings. That's OK. I mean the 700 MHz 21264's draw 109W (yes, thats 47 Amps at 2.35V). Alphas need a shrink in the worst way.
Now 218W really isn't unmanageable. You need a big powersupply because they're at best 70% efficient. But I have reliability worries: what happens if you lose a CPU fan or one of those heatsink nuts get a little loose? Do you unsolder the CPU? What happens when the AC goes down?
-- Robert
Seriously though, pick up any Linux magazine and you'll find several vendors selling alpha based systems and I'm sure they'd be more than happy to set you up.
If I were you though, I'd take a good long serious look at commercial UNIX boxen. If you don't need the features they provide that are still a bit raw in Linux (Journaling file systems, proven non-beta SQL database systems) or you decide that all your people are very familiar with Linux and you don't want to train them on another UNIX, then by all means go for some nice dual or quad alpha 21264's and tons and tons of RAM.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This happens to me every time I turn on my PC.
It gets as far as the initial diagnostics,
and just before it would display the LILO
prompt etc it hangs. A reboot fixes the problem.
I have a PIII-450 with a Chaintech BX motherboard
(I think). If this is a faulty product, perhaps
I should ask for a refund!
IIRC some folks in the High Availability working group were actually working on a way to replace the kernel while the system is actually running. That would be pretty damn slick. Check around on the Linux High Availability pages and I'm sure you'll find it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Far to late for that, /. has long since become a "anything to slam Microsoft and promote Linux" site. When was the last time anything positive was posted about Microsoft?
Yeah, and you should all use black and white passive matrix non-backlighted 4" displays while we are at it... And make absolutedly sure you don't use anything above a 386, then Pentiums take waaay too much power.
I hate it when people ASS U ME using power is bad for the environment. Hell, in my Province (Ontario, Canada) we get our power from a huge waterfall (Niagra Falls). Doesn't hurt the environment at all, and we have such a huge surplus, we sell the extra electricity to the United States. And as long as the Nuclear Power plant at Pickering, Ontario doesn't blow up, and has decent waste management skills, that doesn't hurt the Environment either.
Infact, I'll tell you what hurts the Environment MORE... Running fiber through forests, etc... We should get rid of FM radio and use the bandwidth for data broadcasting, no wires.... Oooops, forgot, might cause Lukemia (ok, so we all know it doesn't work that way, but what the hell, most Environmentalists would beleive it).
I'll leve my 5 computers, with their power hungry 20" colour non-power-save-mode monitors on as long as I like. Doesn't affect my conscious one bit.
The real solution, as far as most of the nutcase Environmentalists are concerned, is for us all to live in straw huts, and forage for food, just like 100,000 years ago. But that doesn't bode well for Canadian winters, now, does it?
if the power fails and the server looses power it should come right beck on when the power come back. Someone shouldnt have to go over and hit the power switch a few times to wake it up.
I have to return some videotapes...
Yeah, well, is all MS software didn't suck so hard, we wouldn't have to call people who make the Windoze choice luzers. Choosing Windows over Linux is like choosing a $5000 Yugo over a free Cadillac. What would you say to someone driving the Yugo? I bet it wouldn't be "you made a free decision and I support it". It'd probably be "Why would you want to drive that trash?"...
Just my 2 cents.
>You leave your desktop system on all the time? Why don't you show some consideration for the environment and
>stop using electricity when you don't need it? They're throwing more coal in the boilers because of people
>like you.
Mostly they are throwing more coal and oil to those power plants because of those idiots who claim to be "green" but still prefer coal and other polluting fossil fuels over nuclear power..
>And no, contributing to distributed.net is not worth it.
One PC doesn't take much electricity to run, especially with some kind power management on. Also, these computers with almost no moving parts, are "growing old", more slowly when they are always on, as heat expansion/shrinking at start/stop is affecting to those components.
This is what's known as "dissemination misinformation"; coppermines work perfectly 100% of the time, but sometimes they boot into NSA-fe mode so the man can go in the back door. If you believe that I believe what I say, then you're crazier than me.
Most people liked their ball-less optical mouse that didn't need a special mat. Sidewinder joysticks are very good quality too.
All in all, microsoft-badged hardware is quite good - MS should stick to the Hardware business, and get the hell out of the software market...
Micron is coming out with a Pentium III compatible chipset that supports DDR SDRAM. I submitted an article to Slashdot at http://www.inqst.com/ddrvrmbs.htm
which shows DDR smoking RAMBUS. I wouldn't be surprised if Micron also came out with a chipset for the Athlon, which can really take advantage of the higher memory speeds.
I suspect VIA also is coming out with a DDR compatible chipset.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
I wondered what was up with the occassional hangup on boot-up.
:)
I've never won wanything before...why did I have to start now?
-- Viva FreeBSD --
My 100MHz AMD 486 running Linux works just fine - just don't try using KDE on it unless I have all day!
a premium for on Intel's rushed-to-market 2nd place processor instead of buying a Athlon.
Oh come on. Like the Athlons have been tested in mission critical applications for
years. Give me a break.
Hah! I count myself lucky working for a company that cals its bugs bugs. In the face of our customers! No "Undocumented feature" crap for us. It it's something we don't like, it's a bug. That ranges from "boring colors on the front bezel of the machine" to "Bad quality of the beers used as codename for software releases (Schlitz and Blatz, go figure. The Europeans support dept is pushing for belgian beer and are planning field trips.) to nasty things that make the box fall down and not immediately stand up. If that happens we write a patch. Big deal. If it's an inconvenience it's dealt with in the next release. Many shades between these two are possible.
Tip for job interview: "How do you call your bugs? What happens if you find one?"
Listen to the answer and decide if you like the company. I like mine.
Whoa! Coppermine is a NEW CPU CORE. Katmai (read: Pentium Pro) core based PII's and PIII's have been around a while, and are really good chips. The Coppermine based PIII's are newer then the Athlon, rushed to market! Release wasn't scheduled for almost eight months. Coppermine != Katmai, much in the way K6-III != Athlon.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Nope, sorry. Coppermine is a rehashed Pentium Pro with larger caches and an optimized instruction pipeline.
Seems like Intel did the Right Thing about an error this time: Admit and fix. Any product can have errors (and most do), the question is how the company reacts to the errors. Some previous bugs were poorly handled, this one (but maybe only because it's not that expensive) is handled well. Or is there a darker side to this story that we haven't heard (cue ominous music!)?
-Lars
Then tell his boss that you're going with a competitor.
They're either with you or against you. There are lots of Alpha vendors who are quite happy to sell you a Linux system. Check out the Linux Journal.
Deleted
Pointy Haired: Quick, get the chip out the door. Intel Tech: But its not ready, we are not even sure it boots. Pointy: (Powers on test setup). See it booted at 733, now send it out the door, we have the Athalon out their making us look like idiots... Tech: Come on just let me turn it on a couple more times and run some tests. Pointy: Send it to the fab NOW or look for a job. Tech: OK, I think its ready now.
What did you expect when Intel is finally getting some decent pressure from the folks over at AMD.
:)
It is amazing what can happen in 2 years in this business.
Now intel is racing to catch up to the Athlon (AMD) and creating buggy products in their hurry.
Maybe AMD will be kind enough to license their chip technology to intel so they can create Athlon compatible chips in hopes of keeping up
Coppermine is not new. Intel won't have a new core until Willamette (sometime, maybe if we're lucky). The Coppermine/Katmai comparisions are closer to K6-II/III. Same meal. Different garnish.
dual 550 celeron with 128M...in fact KDE and even E are quite fast
doh
I know its probably too late for anyone to read this, but I found this actually in the article:
"We've implemented a stop ship, which is a due diligence move to screen for the erratum," Dell spokesman Ken Bissell said Wednesday.
Implemented a stop ship? Give me a break, its called "we've stopped shipping." These PR guys have GOT to start speaking normal english.
Hotnutz.com
Intel has, will, and is screwing up. The very popular PIII serial was a good idea, and secure since nobody will EVER be able to change the serial without rebooting (sense the sarcasm). This coppermine bug is good, who needs to boot their system. Well, I would go with AMD if I could just get a board with the word ASUS proudly stamped on the box. Intel is evil about their motherboard and sloppy about their chips, it's about time chipzilla went the way of the dinosaur....
-- "I'd rather be dead than cool" -Kurt Cobain
It's possible to successfully instal the os on a machine that is set up entirely wrong. For instance, if you have 2 RAM sticks and put them in slots 3+4 instead of 1+2, the machine shouldn't work. But it is entirelly possible to install an OS on it (I've done it). It doesn't turn out very stable, but it boots fine. You just can't run anything. However, the OS does install.
take a look at This Story from a few days ago,
regarding Microsoft and the WTO...
It showed MS in a quite positive light, and most
comments were agreeing with their position.
When they do things worthy of mockery, we mock.
When they do things worthy of praise, we praise (albeit reluctantly)
When is the last time you even used Microsoft software? I use it all the time and don't
encounter errors at the frequency you say is common place(I get Microsoft Errors(TM)
all the time, but not as many as you say).
You seem to be in the opinion that Windows can't function for an hour without some sort of error. Yes Windows is buggy(infested you might say), yes Microsoft isn't in the business of making technological breakthroughs and stable Operating Systems(money, plain and simple), but they are not the devil's you people make them out to be. You should really be in the business of writing fictional stories the way you like to blow things out of proportion. It helps your cause in no way.
And what do you mean that Slashdot is devoted to bashing Windows? Look at all the damned articles! Yes, they talk bad about Microsoft(which is very warranted) on occasion, but most stories on Slashdot actually have a point! They are helpful and discuss new technologies. You can bash Windows and Microsoft all you want up to just before the point where what you are spewing out your mouth is steamed clumps of horse manure. If you complain about something more that it is at fault, you are deluding yourself. This piece of shit computer I am using right now has been up for more than a day without restarting, and don't say that this is a miracle, a fluke, or a lie, because as I had said, it just deludes you. Stop pretending!
And you compare a $5,000 Yugo(Windows) to a free Cadillac(Linux)? This isn't overblown? Linux may kick the kernel out of Windows, but is it this much better than windows? What makes it this much better? Does the penguin comfort you when you are lonely? Does it cook you breakfast, do your taxes, or wash your car? I fail to see how you can use this analogy.
And another thing, Microsoft has never made a good product? It might be rare, but they do do this on occasion. I personally think that Age of Empires was well done(I didn't say it was a significant product, but saying that all of there stuff is bad is a gross lie that cannot be called a generalization). If you wouldn't spend time ragging on EVERYTHING that Microsoft puts out, you would be credible(which is what you do when you say that they have never made anything good).
It's like you were molested by Microsoft when you were a kid or something! A little too much animosity towards them! Again, I am in no way saying that lots of the things said about Microsoft are not true, I am saying that the scope and depth of what you say about them outweighs reality, destroying your creditability. Doesn't Microsoft have enough problems with its produced programs without you making up more(hell, bitching about the real problems would consume enough time)? Bitch about what is real, reserve your imagination for something more creative!
I am writing this to save me another post at a later date. --Only post REAL comments that are
relevant to this discussion. No fiction either!--
I end this post with a joke. To err is human, to really screw up is Microsoft...
...it was very good.
/c scsi is technically serial but anyway...ide is 'more' serial than scsi though :)
:) maybe 16-32mb of each 128 is running full blast! At least half is 'asleep' while the rest is 'tired'.
It wasn't too biased ('devil's advocate' style) and brought up a few things that really jumped at me:
Rambust is serial!!! Ok, sdram is NOT. Basically, the more rambust you add, the slower the overall memory system can get! My god, haev they learned nothing? Everything from networks, to harddrives and beyond has benefitted from going serial-->parallel. (not ports either damnit) Add bus width, add accesess per cycle etc etc etc it improves.
Good-->Better
Hub-->Switch
HD-->RAID* (ok I know thats kindof a cheat
1 CPU-->2-->4
fpm-->sdram
Also Rambust likes le POWER. As in Watts, volts and amps. (well...it was only watts according to my Modern Physics Prof) Most of the time, only a small part of rambust is running 100%. Unless you give it its own 400W powersupply (and mondo coolers
So on PAPER rambust can easily be cast as "much" faster. But in real life it sucks. I don't take any faith in the major 'hardware review' (aka 'pimp the source of funds') sites either, until someone actually **buys** their own rambust and such (also not hand-selected by Big I) and runs real tests, I won't believe one iota of a benchmark.
Royalties suck too, I would feel like shit if I knew $100 of that $1000 (10% is a 'typical' royalty on this planet) for 128mb was going to some greddy bastards who have never even pushed a wafer in their lives.
i820 boards are starting at $180+. A VIA-133a is $100 now. A freaking Dual BX is $150!!! I bet two 600Es + sdram on a Dual BX smoke a 733 + rambust on i820. Given current costs, they would cost about the same too.
Just run your newer Linux kernels under an already up Linux box running VMWare. Never have to turn off your computer again, just upgrade the virtual Linux instead of the host Linux. Ok, time for bed.
Holy shit! User number in the 120,000s!
Do you have any more info on this? I have a K6/2 450 on a GA-5AX. Took 3 months to sort out the problems - replacement mboard/ram/cpu. It now kind of works, but still crashes more than expected (could be win98 though....:( )
You are mixing up validation and testing. Validation parts never ship to any customer, or at best ship as engineering samples only. These are the parts that boot operating systems, and get worked over by the engineers to make sure the design or production process was not screwed up. Processor testing for customer ship is a completely different process. It starts by testing the processors while they are still on the wafer because packaging is costly, therefore you want to only package parts that can be sold. Therefore, you want to find out speed too, since a 200MHz part isn't worth packaging these days. This involves a lot more than simulating booting, and only takes a few seconds. Once the processors are packaged they are tested again at temperature. The temperatures are not that much higher than what the high end of the junction temperature spec is. Cushion comes because the test developers have guardbanded the tests in order to guarantee the part works as labeled. Package test is where parts are binned and labeled for sale. Again this only takes a few seconds. Your processor never sees the inside of a computer until the OEM puts it in, or you do it yourself! The rumours I have seen on the net so far say it is a test escape. Basically, a failure mode came up that their testing couldn't catch. So, they have probably fixed the test by now, and are already shipping all good parts again. This sort of thing is can happen to any processor manufacturer since it is impossible to test all possible combinations of data. Just to try every combination for 64 data pins would require be O(64!). Or, longer than the age of the universe per processor.
This is not informative. It is 90% incorrect. Dastardly