Are there any PC BIOSes that support Firewire boot? I haven't been able to find a single one (Dell says they are considering it, but haven't done anything yet), not even Sony...
no, adobe's shit applications don't use dual cpu's efficiently. yeah, shared bus. you pc guys have been down that road for a long time, haven't you? you can tell us all about it.
no, unfortunately. OS X 10.2 on the G3, and FreeBSD-stable on the P3. I don't necessarily think the G3 is always faster than the P3 - i suspect that integer unit performance is better on the P3. but i don't play games on either platform, so my experience was related to one type of operation that i perform on two types of hardware. I agree, that sort of comparison would be great. Maybe i'll try OpenBSD 3.2 on both machines, and find a similar set of applications that can be compared. in my case, the mp3 conversion is relevant, but it might not be interesting or even applicable to someone else.
here's a benchmark that i use - my 500MHz G3 with 1MB of L2 cache running at 250MHz will encode a 7-minute song as a 192Kbit mp3 in 1 minute, 24 seconds. my work computer (933MHz p3) does the same song in 3 minutes, 32 seconds. this processor is superior to the G3 i mentioned above, so it will perform better than that. and, as a side note, my 733MHz G4 will encode that 7 minute song in less than 40 seconds.
i hate to break it to you, AC, but MAC is usually associated with Media Access Control - you know, the hardware address of a NIC. Mac is short for Macintosh. It's not MACINTOSH. since MAC is taken by people to mean something else, it's worth pointing out.
new world macs don't have ROMs. no macintosh model made since the beige G3 has ROMs. But the version of Open Firmware has to be able to enumerate the device tree in a fashion that OS X can understand. I notice that the article didn't seem to mention what sort of firmware (PROM, BIOS, etc) these motherboards use... i have a 500MHz G3 iMac, among others, and the worst part about it isn't the processor (which encodes MP3s twice as fast as my 933MHz P3 at work), but the half-assed video chipset that came with it. the fact that these boards have an agp slot keeps the machines from being locked into that sort of problem.
yeah, but your desktop machine isn't a mac, so the comparison isn't a valid one. i'll be the first to admit that macs are not for everyone. not everyone wants to pay the premium. not everyone cares what OS runs on their computer. Macs in general and these motherboards in particular are not for those people. if you're a developer who'd like to work with PPC Linux, this is a lot cheaper than a modern Mac, and it lets the buyer pick their own video card, etc. or if you're someone who doesn't want to support monopolies like intel or microsoft or apple, then this is a nice alternative, particularly if you're the sort of person who doesn't like the limitations of a PC BIOS. Choice is a good thing - it doesn't mean that you personally have to take the alternative. but it's certainly an (relatively speaking) affordable way for me to get a pretty decent PPC board to run linux (maybe even openbsd) on.
a UNIX program cannot, nor can an NT program, because once either of those two OSes has used the BIOS to bootstrap their own hardware detection and interface routines, they no longer interact with the BIOS. DOS doesn't have it's own hardware detection, it was written to use the BIOS for that. that doesn't mean it couldn't, though.
you do know what BIOS means, right? it's the glue that ties the individual hardware components in a PC together, and provides some management of communication between those devices and another layer or layers of software running on top of the BIOS. All of this talk that DOS is a BIOS extension because one is able to bypass the BIOS and write directly to the hardware is nonsense. the PC BIOS is a simple equivalent of the PROM or OpenFirmware on other hardware. DOS requires the BIOS, just like every other operating system that boots on a PC. in the case of DOS, it further uses the BIOS for much of the communication between the hardware and DOS. On linux or nt, the bios is simply used to load their own hardware detection routines, and the BIOS isn't used after initial load.
i don't remember accessing the bios directly when writing dos programs, but i do remember that there were few standard APIs for accessing various 'features', such as video access. I won't argue that dos was heavily reliant on the BIOS for many things, but i still don't agree it was an extension to the BIOS. very bare, sure. there were no abstractions or frameworks to program with, but that doesn't make it a BIOS or an extension.
Disk Operating System Hmmm, OS is in there. Maybe it didn't suffer from feature bloat, but it's not anything like the kernel on commodore computers, which really was a simple overlay of the machine's firmware (using PEEKs to read the directory and load files, indeed!). I think the Disk part was named intentionally since, when it was released, not every OS had access to that sort of mass storage by default. Those lame cassette drives were quite popular, at least on a number of platforms. and at some point QuickBASIC was included, so at the very least it had a development environment as well. seems like it was an OS to me... As to differences, UNIX and NT are fundamentally different from each other and DOS, but that doesn't make either one an overgrown BIOS (see above reference to Commodore Kernel).
i didn't realize that office for the mac is what has kept that platform afloat. I thought it was quark and adobe.... have you seen something that demonstrates this?
There are a lot of Firewire enclosures that have two ports - just have a look around. Even the cheapie units typically have two ports. Want to know what makes the SANCube special? The software it comes with to allow computers to share the open volume (the AccelWare bit). This seems to be most of the cost of the SANcube; the software alone is $895US per user... here's a link to the developer: http://www.attotech.com/fcaccelware.ht ml
ieee1394 devices are peer to peer; the problem isn't with the storage devices on firewire, it would be having an operating system that supports shared filesystems. I've been looking for something reasonably priced for a while; it's all pretty expensive...
You might be able to get SuSE PPC 7.3 running on it. They list the 7025 F50 as working, and the F30 is also a 7025-series box. It doesn't mention whether it works with more than one processor or not. I'd think the biggest sticking points would be the service processor and any SSA devices you've got.
i've got a couple of StarMax boxes - both 200MHz 604s. They run YDL 2.4 pretty well. At one time I struggled with SuSE 7.1 PPC on it, but the newer versions of SuSE no doubt work much better (7.1 still used the 2.2-series kernels, and there were some issues with the console driver and the ATI Mach-64VT chip used on the motorola logic boards). Keep in mind that an old-world Macintosh (any that doesn't use Open Firmware, which is anything made before the Blue and White G3) will require a small MacOS partition to run BootX from.
well, if you did that, then the cagers couldn't try to regulate motorcycles out of existence, as is their wont. since no one has ben successful at an outright-motorcycle ban in the US(though imposing a maximum horsepower limit could be the very tiptop of that slippery slope), they find it easier to impinge on ownership, little by little. mandatory safety courses (though none required for the aforementioned 3-ton SUV or.5-ton commuter), mandatory helmets, mandatory horsepower limits... soon a rider will need proof of full health insurance before they're allowed to ride...
ugh, those media GX processors should have a P-rating of 75. they were dog slow. they really did run at 233MHz (it was cyrix's 486 core, i believe), though. but they weren't that great, unless you needed a low-cost linux box at the time (kernel 2.0.38 worked pretty good on it). personally, i think compaq makes some of the crappiest desktop PCs around. their servers are ok, but i used to work at a company that standaridized on compaq desktop hardware, and we had nothing but trouble from their third-rate hardware.
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Are there any PC BIOSes that support Firewire boot? I haven't been able to find a single one (Dell says they are considering it, but haven't done anything yet), not even Sony...
no, adobe's shit applications don't use dual cpu's efficiently. yeah, shared bus. you pc guys have been down that road for a long time, haven't you? you can tell us all about it.
actually, no macintosh model made since the blue and white G3 uses a hardware ROM. that crack i smoked yesterday before posting messed me all up...
no, unfortunately. OS X 10.2 on the G3, and FreeBSD-stable on the P3.
I don't necessarily think the G3 is always faster than the P3 - i suspect that integer unit performance is better on the P3. but i don't play games on either platform, so my experience was related to one type of operation that i perform on two types of hardware.
I agree, that sort of comparison would be great. Maybe i'll try OpenBSD 3.2 on both machines, and find a similar set of applications that can be compared. in my case, the mp3 conversion is relevant, but it might not be interesting or even applicable to someone else.
here's a benchmark that i use - my 500MHz G3 with 1MB of L2 cache running at 250MHz will encode a 7-minute song as a 192Kbit mp3 in 1 minute, 24 seconds. my work computer (933MHz p3) does the same song in 3 minutes, 32 seconds. this processor is superior to the G3 i mentioned above, so it will perform better than that. and, as a side note, my 733MHz G4 will encode that 7 minute song in less than 40 seconds.
to you. not everyone shares your enthusiasm for lots of fans and amazing power consumption.
i hate to break it to you, AC, but MAC is usually associated with Media Access Control - you know, the hardware address of a NIC. Mac is short for Macintosh. It's not MACINTOSH. since MAC is taken by people to mean something else, it's worth pointing out.
new world macs don't have ROMs. no macintosh model made since the beige G3 has ROMs. But the version of Open Firmware has to be able to enumerate the device tree in a fashion that OS X can understand. I notice that the article didn't seem to mention what sort of firmware (PROM, BIOS, etc) these motherboards use...
i have a 500MHz G3 iMac, among others, and the worst part about it isn't the processor (which encodes MP3s twice as fast as my 933MHz P3 at work), but the half-assed video chipset that came with it. the fact that these boards have an agp slot keeps the machines from being locked into that sort of problem.
yeah, but your desktop machine isn't a mac, so the comparison isn't a valid one.
i'll be the first to admit that macs are not for everyone. not everyone wants to pay the premium. not everyone cares what OS runs on their computer. Macs in general and these motherboards in particular are not for those people.
if you're a developer who'd like to work with PPC Linux, this is a lot cheaper than a modern Mac, and it lets the buyer pick their own video card, etc. or if you're someone who doesn't want to support monopolies like intel or microsoft or apple, then this is a nice alternative, particularly if you're the sort of person who doesn't like the limitations of a PC BIOS. Choice is a good thing - it doesn't mean that you personally have to take the alternative. but it's certainly an (relatively speaking) affordable way for me to get a pretty decent PPC board to run linux (maybe even openbsd) on.
a UNIX program cannot, nor can an NT program, because once either of those two OSes has used the BIOS to bootstrap their own hardware detection and interface routines, they no longer interact with the BIOS. DOS doesn't have it's own hardware detection, it was written to use the BIOS for that. that doesn't mean it couldn't, though.
you do know what BIOS means, right? it's the glue that ties the individual hardware components in a PC together, and provides some management of communication between those devices and another layer or layers of software running on top of the BIOS. All of this talk that DOS is a BIOS extension because one is able to bypass the BIOS and write directly to the hardware is nonsense. the PC BIOS is a simple equivalent of the PROM or OpenFirmware on other hardware. DOS requires the BIOS, just like every other operating system that boots on a PC. in the case of DOS, it further uses the BIOS for much of the communication between the hardware and DOS. On linux or nt, the bios is simply used to load their own hardware detection routines, and the BIOS isn't used after initial load.
i don't remember accessing the bios directly when writing dos programs, but i do remember that there were few standard APIs for accessing various 'features', such as video access. I won't argue that dos was heavily reliant on the BIOS for many things, but i still don't agree it was an extension to the BIOS. very bare, sure. there were no abstractions or frameworks to program with, but that doesn't make it a BIOS or an extension.
i was wondering why i've been using ipx-tools all this time myself...
Disk Operating System
Hmmm, OS is in there. Maybe it didn't suffer from feature bloat, but it's not anything like the kernel on commodore computers, which really was a simple overlay of the machine's firmware (using PEEKs to read the directory and load files, indeed!).
I think the Disk part was named intentionally since, when it was released, not every OS had access to that sort of mass storage by default. Those lame cassette drives were quite popular, at least on a number of platforms. and at some point QuickBASIC was included, so at the very least it had a development environment as well. seems like it was an OS to me...
As to differences, UNIX and NT are fundamentally different from each other and DOS, but that doesn't make either one an overgrown BIOS (see above reference to Commodore Kernel).
i didn't realize that office for the mac is what has kept that platform afloat. I thought it was quark and adobe.... have you seen something that demonstrates this?
i thought it was
that is not dead/
which can eternal lie/
and with strange aeons/
even death may die
?
http://www.sgi.com/features/2002/nov/hpc/images/lg _origin_3900_out.jpg
is it that young? i thought it was:
old enough to bleed/ old enough to breed
maybe that's something else, then?
thinking of a little r kelly action there, perhaps?
Air travel from the UK to the US seems to be considerably cheaper than vice versa. I don't know why. anyone from the UK know the reasons?
There are a lot of Firewire enclosures that have two ports - just have a look around. Even the cheapie units typically have two ports. Want to know what makes the SANCube special? The software it comes with to allow computers to share the open volume (the AccelWare bit). This seems to be most of the cost of the SANcube; the software alone is $895US per user... here's a link to the developer:t ml
http://www.attotech.com/fcaccelware.h
ieee1394 devices are peer to peer; the problem isn't with the storage devices on firewire, it would be having an operating system that supports shared filesystems. I've been looking for something reasonably priced for a while; it's all pretty expensive...
You might be able to get SuSE PPC 7.3 running on it. They list the 7025 F50 as working, and the F30 is also a 7025-series box. It doesn't mention whether it works with more than one processor or not. I'd think the biggest sticking points would be the service processor and any SSA devices you've got.
i've got a couple of StarMax boxes - both 200MHz 604s. They run YDL 2.4 pretty well. At one time I struggled with SuSE 7.1 PPC on it, but the newer versions of SuSE no doubt work much better (7.1 still used the 2.2-series kernels, and there were some issues with the console driver and the ATI Mach-64VT chip used on the motorola logic boards). Keep in mind that an old-world Macintosh (any that doesn't use Open Firmware, which is anything made before the Blue and White G3) will require a small MacOS partition to run BootX from.
well, if you did that, then the cagers couldn't try to regulate motorcycles out of existence, as is their wont. .5-ton commuter), mandatory helmets, mandatory horsepower limits... soon a rider will need proof of full health insurance before they're allowed to ride...
since no one has ben successful at an outright-motorcycle ban in the US(though imposing a maximum horsepower limit could be the very tiptop of that slippery slope), they find it easier to impinge on ownership, little by little. mandatory safety courses (though none required for the aforementioned 3-ton SUV or
ugh, those media GX processors should have a P-rating of 75. they were dog slow. they really did run at 233MHz (it was cyrix's 486 core, i believe), though. but they weren't that great, unless you needed a low-cost linux box at the time (kernel 2.0.38 worked pretty good on it). personally, i think compaq makes some of the crappiest desktop PCs around. their servers are ok, but i used to work at a company that standaridized on compaq desktop hardware, and we had nothing but trouble from their third-rate hardware.