My machine with a PCIe onboard chipset from Intel appears to hang when transferring files from one SATA drive to another. It becomes very unresponsive. Is burst-mode SCSI equally bad, and is SAS any better? I would like to know if there is an I/O solution for PC that has classic SCSI parallelism.
How important is the controller chipset? I have a PCI Express Intel chipset, and I had the impression that reading and writing to multiple SATA devices at once is not possible, despite the mainboard has 4 SATA sockets that I all used. Also, the Linux driver seems to make the machine hang during transfers. I don't exactly know which buses are effected, but I think it's DMA transfers blocking the memory bus. The machine becomes very unresponsive during copying of a large number of files from one device to another. I know that SCSI is packet-based and never caused hangs during file transfers. Is SAS similar to SCSI in that aspect?
There's too much ambiguity in the first version. That is because there is only one verb, "playing with the thought", but you qualified it (don't know the proper grammatical term) with both "Today", and "one day in the future". The reader doesn't know you're talking about buying them in the future till he completes the sentence. Using "again" to qualify the verb makes it even more confusing and wordy.
Thanks. That's one of the traits of the German language that I apparently carried into my English. Actually, what I wanted to say was:
"Today, I was toying with the idea one more time of buying an AIX workstation, in the hope of purchasing one someday if I can afford it then. I was surprised to find that IBM won't be offering their IntelliStation POWER series workstations anymore, starting with January '09."
Is that one better?:)
I'm naturally prone of run-on sentences, because my native language is German, and we often string together whole sentences, just separated by comma.;) Thanks, btw.:)
Was it simply that the AIX box was a multiproc power system?
No, it was the system architecture of the RS/6000 and the clarity of AIX that I enjoyed. It was like "playing with the real toys". At that time, Linux for instance, wasn't half as far as it is now.
You're possibly right... when I used AIX, CD-ROMs were the primary installation medium. I think network installation was possible also, but I didn't bother with it, back then.
Yeah, I thought about that today. Is performance really that good with SAS?:)
I used to be a fan of SCSI (being a former Amiga 3000 user), and kept it up on my PCs, until the prices of SCSI hardware was way beyond that of comparable IDE stuff. Then I had to give in to IDE (and later, SATA).
If SAS is really that good, I might consider it in the future during my next PC upgrading round.
If you set the color depth of your X screen to true color visuals, CDE looks quite nice. CDE itself however can only use 256 colors, the applications can use more, IIRC. (On Solaris, CDE doesn't run on true color depth, IIRC.)
CDE has some nice features, like dropping icons into menus, stuff like that. (You first created an action script using a desktop applet, and then dropped the icon into a menu.) BTW, the idea of desktop applets comes from CDE; basically everything was controlled by a script, IIRC.
It's only because the color depth is so low. IIRC, I had configured my RS/6000 to run CDE in true color graphics mode. (On Solaris, CDE only had up to 256 colors)
I am a programmer, probably with more years in experience than you have lived... !;) -- It's also why I still yearn for AIX: Awesome kernel, awesome API.:)
I don't consider myself an AIX guru, but the software quality, reliability and stuff I've seen on AIX is finally also visible in Linux. Days ago, I was cursing Ubuntu 8.10's broken X server, and then I switched to the current Debian 4.0r5, and I was pleasantly surprised. A calm, quiet, stable Linux, that simply runs. That's what I want, systems that run.
I figure that a lot has to do with the underlying GCC version. GCC 4.x generates much, much better, much more stable code than GCC 3.x. And this also affects the OS and all the applications compiled with it. Then, when the compiler problem is out of the way, you can really begin to fix bugs in applications. On AIX, IBM's C/C++ Set was of unparalleled quality, and that was also a reason for coding on AIX. Since GCC 4.x, Linux is finally getting the stability it deserves. (BTW, I had proof of the GCC 3.x problems on OpenBSD 4.3 a while ago, when I had to recompile GNOME without optimizer to make it run more stable)
Also have a look at FreeBSD and OpenBSD, both are a bit comparable to AIX and Solaris in terms of clean directory structures, stability and so on. But Linux, too, is getting better every month.
Yup, at home I'm using Debian 4.0r5, OpenBSD 4.3 and FreeBSD 7.0, and I like all three of them. However, the performance of my PC's hardware is less than impressive, given the specs. Linux does perform well, but I suspect AIX would be many times faster on comparable hardware. When I think about that old RS/6000 with AIX 4.2, which had a 266 MHz PowerPC processor, it was much faster than comparable PC hardware. Of course, on the big iron, AIX ran even faster. But I didn't have opportunity to compare big iron performance of AIX versus Linux, yet.
Yeah, that's why people hated IBM in the 1980ies and walked over to Microsoft. Except, nowadays, Microsoft is the bad guy. I guess, someday, the advantages that AIX had will have been entirely consumed by free alternatives, like Linux. My Debian 4.0r5 at home works extremely well.:)
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Thanks! :)
My machine with a PCIe onboard chipset from Intel appears to hang when transferring files from one SATA drive to another. It becomes very unresponsive. Is burst-mode SCSI equally bad, and is SAS any better? I would like to know if there is an I/O solution for PC that has classic SCSI parallelism.
How important is the controller chipset? I have a PCI Express Intel chipset, and I had the impression that reading and writing to multiple SATA devices at once is not possible, despite the mainboard has 4 SATA sockets that I all used. Also, the Linux driver seems to make the machine hang during transfers. I don't exactly know which buses are effected, but I think it's DMA transfers blocking the memory bus. The machine becomes very unresponsive during copying of a large number of files from one device to another. I know that SCSI is packet-based and never caused hangs during file transfers. Is SAS similar to SCSI in that aspect?
There's too much ambiguity in the first version. That is because there is only one verb, "playing with the thought", but you qualified it (don't know the proper grammatical term) with both "Today", and "one day in the future". The reader doesn't know you're talking about buying them in the future till he completes the sentence. Using "again" to qualify the verb makes it even more confusing and wordy.
Thanks. That's one of the traits of the German language that I apparently carried into my English. Actually, what I wanted to say was: "Today, I was toying with the idea one more time of buying an AIX workstation, in the hope of purchasing one someday if I can afford it then. I was surprised to find that IBM won't be offering their IntelliStation POWER series workstations anymore, starting with January '09." Is that one better? :)
I'm naturally prone of run-on sentences, because my native language is German, and we often string together whole sentences, just separated by comma. ;) Thanks, btw. :)
Was it simply that the AIX box was a multiproc power system?
No, it was the system architecture of the RS/6000 and the clarity of AIX that I enjoyed. It was like "playing with the real toys". At that time, Linux for instance, wasn't half as far as it is now.
OS/2 was way ahead of its time. Object-oriented desktop with templates (!) and other fun stuff. :)
ROFL!! :)
Thanks. I have to try Xming sometime. Back when I used AIX, Exceed was about the only thing available, but it did work really well.
lol, yup I liked it! :)
You're possibly right ... when I used AIX, CD-ROMs were the primary installation medium. I think network installation was possible also, but I didn't bother with it, back then.
Yeah, I thought about that today. Is performance really that good with SAS? :)
I used to be a fan of SCSI (being a former Amiga 3000 user), and kept it up on my PCs, until the prices of SCSI hardware was way beyond that of comparable IDE stuff. Then I had to give in to IDE (and later, SATA). If SAS is really that good, I might consider it in the future during my next PC upgrading round.
Yeah, we had exactly one compiler license for AIX, and I was the only user! ;)
If you set the color depth of your X screen to true color visuals, CDE looks quite nice. CDE itself however can only use 256 colors, the applications can use more, IIRC. (On Solaris, CDE doesn't run on true color depth, IIRC.)
CDE has some nice features, like dropping icons into menus, stuff like that. (You first created an action script using a desktop applet, and then dropped the icon into a menu.) BTW, the idea of desktop applets comes from CDE; basically everything was controlled by a script, IIRC.
It's only because the color depth is so low. IIRC, I had configured my RS/6000 to run CDE in true color graphics mode. (On Solaris, CDE only had up to 256 colors)
Yeah ... looks like it.
Not really! I really dig AIX! :)
I am a programmer, probably with more years in experience than you have lived ... ! ;) -- It's also why I still yearn for AIX: Awesome kernel, awesome API. :)
AIX gurus, how ready is Linux to replace AIX now?
I don't consider myself an AIX guru, but the software quality, reliability and stuff I've seen on AIX is finally also visible in Linux. Days ago, I was cursing Ubuntu 8.10's broken X server, and then I switched to the current Debian 4.0r5, and I was pleasantly surprised. A calm, quiet, stable Linux, that simply runs. That's what I want, systems that run.
I figure that a lot has to do with the underlying GCC version. GCC 4.x generates much, much better, much more stable code than GCC 3.x. And this also affects the OS and all the applications compiled with it. Then, when the compiler problem is out of the way, you can really begin to fix bugs in applications. On AIX, IBM's C/C++ Set was of unparalleled quality, and that was also a reason for coding on AIX. Since GCC 4.x, Linux is finally getting the stability it deserves. (BTW, I had proof of the GCC 3.x problems on OpenBSD 4.3 a while ago, when I had to recompile GNOME without optimizer to make it run more stable)
Also have a look at FreeBSD and OpenBSD, both are a bit comparable to AIX and Solaris in terms of clean directory structures, stability and so on. But Linux, too, is getting better every month.
Grammar mistakes? Tell me which, English really is my second language.
I loved programming on AIX. I was less than impressed with Solaris and Linux of that time. IMO, the AIX system calls are the way things should be. ;)
Yup, at home I'm using Debian 4.0r5, OpenBSD 4.3 and FreeBSD 7.0, and I like all three of them. However, the performance of my PC's hardware is less than impressive, given the specs. Linux does perform well, but I suspect AIX would be many times faster on comparable hardware. When I think about that old RS/6000 with AIX 4.2, which had a 266 MHz PowerPC processor, it was much faster than comparable PC hardware. Of course, on the big iron, AIX ran even faster. But I didn't have opportunity to compare big iron performance of AIX versus Linux, yet.
Yeah, that's why people hated IBM in the 1980ies and walked over to Microsoft. Except, nowadays, Microsoft is the bad guy. I guess, someday, the advantages that AIX had will have been entirely consumed by free alternatives, like Linux. My Debian 4.0r5 at home works extremely well. :)
Yes, unfortunately that employer went the way of the dodo, or I would still be able to hack away on that machine, perhaps! ;)