If IBM adds power management to the kernel for this watch project, it sure wouldn't help with your Thinkpad's battery life.
The watch uses a Cirrus EP7311, which is an ARM720T based system-on-chip. The 7311 has numerous power saving features, none of which are really supported by the kernel. It can be put into an idle state much like the APM idle mode on PCs. It can also be downclocked to 18MHz or so (from 74MHz), though there are no provisions in the kernel yet for doing so and not hiccuping.
Portable devices like cell phones, MP3 players, and even digital watches rely on power saving tricks like these to get any sort of decent battery life. If you turned off all of the power saving features on your Palm, you'd probably get about two hours off of fresh AAAs.
The SPARCPlug didn't do in Ross, the UltraSPARC did.
Ross's meat and potatoes was their infamously fast CPU modules for SPARC 10 and 20 systems. The RT625, in a single CPU model, is easily twice as fast as Sun's highest end MBUS module for the 20. Plus, they made single-wide modules with two CPUs each, allowing you to jam up to four CPUs into a pizza box. Their HyperStations were actually decent machines, equivalent to their Sun counterparts in just about every respect. The only problems anyone ever had were that you needed an OS patch to run certain CPUs in certain configurations. Otherwise, they were solid.
Of course, they knew they made products that were as good or better than Sun's. They had to pull some engineering tricks to do this (6+ device MCMs, massive caches, etc). As a result, Ross charged significantly more than Sun did for cloned hardware. Ross rode on this success until the UltraSPARC came out. Out of the blue, Sun revamped their architecture almost completely. And they did so at a great price: An Ultra 1/170 was under $5k in 1997, modestly decked out. In the same year, I was quoted $9000 SparcPlug with a 200MHz RT620, similarly loaded. The choice here is quite obvious.
The SPARCPlug didn't help. The things were notoriously unreliable. The three whiny fans inside the 5 1/4" full-height enclosure didn't properly cool them, leading to an eventual heat death. They had a shoddy sheet-metal frame, which often had mis-tapped threads and would bend the CPU board if you looked at it wrong. To top it off, they had only one SBUS slot and four RAM sockets. All this to get a Sun in the same box as your PC? You might as well put an Ultra 5 in a closet somewhere, since it was intended to be accessed through XDMCP.
Here is an old article about the ARM Amulet, an asynchronous implementation of the ARM core in async logic. Remember that as a side-effect, an asynchronous logic CPU draws less power than its synchronous counterparts. An idle loop will in fact result in minimal power draw, as opposed to today's processors that need to use sleep states and other power management trickery to save juice.
Think back to when you were a kid. Didn't you do at least one thing because you were expressly forbidden to?
My parents raised me with that memory fresh in their heads. My mom offered to buy me smokes in junior high; to this day I've touched only one cigarette. I was allowed to watch "A Clockwork Orange" when I was 14; I have yet to go out on the town for a bit of the old ultraviolence, let alone ever picked / been in a fight.
I'm not saying that this is the proper method to raise a child. On the other hand, I did not turn out to be a sociopath (I think...)
Check out the Dallas Semiconductor TINI. It's the size of a 72-pin SIMM yet runs a multitasking OS with a TCP/IP stack and a JVM. It has ethernet, among other buses, plus 512k SRAM / 512k flash. Sure, it's not a 486. However, this thing can do most everything that anybody would need one of the Jumptec boards for (web server, real world to cgi interfaces) for less than a twentieth of the cost.
Dallas is giving away their OS, apps, docs, schematics, and source for free from their site.
I'm surprised that the TINI never made it on Slashdot before. Who cares about 486-that-fits-in-my-pants-and-costs-as-much-as-a-P C systems when you can do just about the same for much less? Sure, it's neat-o and geekworthy that it could be done, but is it practical?
Great. So, with the QNX crypt cracker, can I get root on a missle?
long live Four Day Simultaneous Timecube!!!
on
Quickielanche
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Finally. It took this long for Mr. Ray to get Slashdot notoriety. This is still the funniest site I've ever read. Gene Ray is too loony for this stuff to be a joke. Crackpot pseudoscience at its best!
You are stupid and evil and do not know that you are stupid and evil!
Had my 5120 for a year. I'm still in love with it. Simple UI, not too tiny as to be uncomfortable to use, good signal quality, and nigh indestructable. Besides, the Wireless Web is a load of unusable crap anyway.
Won't the DotComGuy (dude living solely on 'net-ordered stuff in Dallas, legally changed his name) get miffed that he's got a sort-of subdomain to a pig? Why not rename the pig to DotComPig. Then you could open up a whole Dilbert naming convention: DotComGirl, DotComDog, DotComKid, etc...
Well, then. That settles it. It couldn't POSSIBLY work with Linux, right?
Seriously... it's probably based around the Lucent Wavelan IEEE chipset (what lives in the Apple Airport and others) as that's the 11Mbit chipset that they've been selling. There is already a working driver for these devices.
Bluetooth was not meant for short-haul peer to peer lans. It was designed to go short distances (~10ft or so) for interconnecting personal computing devices. It will link things like PDAs, cellphones, digital cameras, and other personal gadgets. Think of it like IrDA but without the Ir.
...Linus is going to root for embedded Linux. He worked for Transmeta. He has financial interests in Transmeta. Along with laptops, embedded is their business. Wait a minute... I'm working to start a company based around embedding Linux.
Cool! Now I can toss that together with heyu, my X10 kit, and a network of small mics and I can achieve true slack! No more getting off the couch to turn off the light or start the toaster. Now I need a Cye so I can shout, in a Cartman falsetto, "Hey! I want some PIE!" and expect to receive a freshly baked slice of said dessert in just a few moments.
I'm waiting for IBM to release their top-secret replicator technology. Then I won't have to order out for pizza again!
The future is now, and it keeps me from getting off my sorry ass.
Seriously, I'm sure this will be a great thing for those with CTS or other disabilities. Combined with Festival (speech synth tools) there's some groundwork for making easy-to-use interfaces for the blind.
1) Anything better than ultrawide SCSI is pointless for average users. Yes, you can crank out more performance with seven striped drives, but who really has the money.
2) Decent ultrawide controllers are relatively cheap (look at NCR/Symbios based cards.)
3) Smaller SCSI disks are getting very affordable, where small 10GB and cheap $200.
4) SCSI has lower CPU overhead and doesn't make your system slug along as the kernel babysits the disk transfers.
5) SCSI disks are usually made with higher MTBFs in mind.
6) Where do you need the performance? Swap, binaries, config files, libraries. Mostly swap.
7) Do you really need massive performance on the disks that hold your MP3 collection? Didn't think so.
8) IDE disks are shit cheap.
The moral? SCSI is slick. Don't spend too much on a controller or disks. Put your root on that disk. Then use IDE for all non-critical data.
Yep. Tanner's rocks. I picked up a couple of X-Band carts (the modem module for Super Nintendo and Genesis) for $2 there the other day. Get 'em while they're hot!
Bleargh. First Saturday has gone down the shitter. I've been going on and off for the last 10 years or so and it's been constantly downhill. I've even had my own booth there a couple of times. Not to sound like Grumpy Old Man, but it really was better before they opened it up to commercial vendors. It was cool back in the day when you could, in the same five minutes, score a HE-NE laser head and supply and a box of vintage HP calculators for less than $20. Now you see every surplus store bozo selling the same discontinued product as all the others.
Don't get me wrong... Come Saturday morning if I'm not too trashed I might head down there to see what's up. Since I moved to Austin I don't get to hit it as often as I'd like.
My recommendation for those who need to get their weird hardware fix: Tanner's Electronics, just off of 35E on Valwood. They've always got something odd.
I've got the 'WingMan' style at work. I haven't found anything else besides my trusty Trackman Marble that I feel comfortable using all day. I believe that its larger than average size allows you to push the buttons with the bases of your fingers without having them drag on the pad, rather than pushing with your fingertips at an odd (and uncomfortable) angle that most mice can force a user into. These are also good for gaming, as evidenced by the mouse of choice of those who place at the top in the occasional interdepartmental Q3fests.
But seriously folks, the 'WedgeMouse' as it's known by the locals, is worth picking up if you don't believe in trackballs.Otherwise, the Trackman Marble that many posters seem to have been recommending wins.
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If IBM adds power management to the kernel for this watch project, it sure wouldn't help with your Thinkpad's battery life.
The watch uses a Cirrus EP7311, which is an ARM720T based system-on-chip. The 7311 has numerous power saving features, none of which are really supported by the kernel. It can be put into an idle state much like the APM idle mode on PCs. It can also be downclocked to 18MHz or so (from 74MHz), though there are no provisions in the kernel yet for doing so and not hiccuping.
Portable devices like cell phones, MP3 players, and even digital watches rely on power saving tricks like these to get any sort of decent battery life. If you turned off all of the power saving features on your Palm, you'd probably get about two hours off of fresh AAAs.
The SPARCPlug didn't do in Ross, the UltraSPARC did.
Ross's meat and potatoes was their infamously fast CPU modules for SPARC 10 and 20 systems. The RT625, in a single CPU model, is easily twice as fast as Sun's highest end MBUS module for the 20. Plus, they made single-wide modules with two CPUs each, allowing you to jam up to four CPUs into a pizza box. Their HyperStations were actually decent machines, equivalent to their Sun counterparts in just about every respect. The only problems anyone ever had were that you needed an OS patch to run certain CPUs in certain configurations. Otherwise, they were solid.
Of course, they knew they made products that were as good or better than Sun's. They had to pull some engineering tricks to do this (6+ device MCMs, massive caches, etc). As a result, Ross charged significantly more than Sun did for cloned hardware. Ross rode on this success until the UltraSPARC came out. Out of the blue, Sun revamped their architecture almost completely. And they did so at a great price: An Ultra 1/170 was under $5k in 1997, modestly decked out. In the same year, I was quoted $9000 SparcPlug with a 200MHz RT620, similarly loaded. The choice here is quite obvious.
The SPARCPlug didn't help. The things were notoriously unreliable. The three whiny fans inside the 5 1/4" full-height enclosure didn't properly cool them, leading to an eventual heat death. They had a shoddy sheet-metal frame, which often had mis-tapped threads and would bend the CPU board if you looked at it wrong. To top it off, they had only one SBUS slot and four RAM sockets. All this to get a Sun in the same box as your PC? You might as well put an Ultra 5 in a closet somewhere, since it was intended to be accessed through XDMCP.
They did have that nifty little blue LED tho...
When the core developers of GNOME are dissin' their own project, it's time to switch to KDE.
I think it's time to take a college-level Intro to Physics course.
Here is an old article about the ARM Amulet, an asynchronous implementation of the ARM core in async logic. Remember that as a side-effect, an asynchronous logic CPU draws less power than its synchronous counterparts. An idle loop will in fact result in minimal power draw, as opposed to today's processors that need to use sleep states and other power management trickery to save juice.
iButton Digital Jewelry
Think back to when you were a kid. Didn't you do at least one thing because you were expressly forbidden to?
My parents raised me with that memory fresh in their heads. My mom offered to buy me smokes in junior high; to this day I've touched only one cigarette. I was allowed to watch "A Clockwork Orange" when I was 14; I have yet to go out on the town for a bit of the old ultraviolence, let alone ever picked / been in a fight.
I'm not saying that this is the proper method to raise a child. On the other hand, I did not turn out to be a sociopath (I think...)
Finally! It took them long enough.
Still, it explains why my apt-get failed earlier this afternoon...
Dallas is giving away their OS, apps, docs, schematics, and source for free from their site.
I'm surprised that the TINI never made it on Slashdot before. Who cares about 486-that-fits-in-my-pants-and-costs-as-much-as-a-P C systems when you can do just about the same for much less? Sure, it's neat-o and geekworthy that it could be done, but is it practical?
Wasn't he responsible for the Burning Rings of Fire in Quake3?
Great. So, with the QNX crypt cracker, can I get root on a missle?
Finally. It took this long for Mr. Ray to get Slashdot notoriety. This is still the funniest site I've ever read. Gene Ray is too loony for this stuff to be a joke. Crackpot pseudoscience at its best!
You are stupid and evil and do not know that you are stupid and evil!
Had my 5120 for a year. I'm still in love with it. Simple UI, not too tiny as to be uncomfortable to use, good signal quality, and nigh indestructable. Besides, the Wireless Web is a load of unusable crap anyway.
Won't the DotComGuy (dude living solely on 'net-ordered stuff in Dallas, legally changed his name) get miffed that he's got a sort-of subdomain to a pig? Why not rename the pig to DotComPig. Then you could open up a whole Dilbert naming convention: DotComGirl, DotComDog, DotComKid, etc...
Well, then. That settles it. It couldn't POSSIBLY work with Linux, right?
Seriously... it's probably based around the Lucent Wavelan IEEE chipset (what lives in the Apple Airport and others) as that's the 11Mbit chipset that they've been selling. There is already a working driver for these devices.
Bluetooth was not meant for short-haul peer to peer lans. It was designed to go short distances (~10ft or so) for interconnecting personal computing devices. It will link things like PDAs, cellphones, digital cameras, and other personal gadgets. Think of it like IrDA but without the Ir.
Hey, isn't Eros the hollowed-out asteroid where Ender and his squadron led the attack against the Buggers?
...Linus is going to root for embedded Linux. He worked for Transmeta. He has financial interests in Transmeta. Along with laptops, embedded is their business. Wait a minute... I'm working to start a company based around embedding Linux.
I'll shut up now.
Cool! Now I can toss that together with heyu, my X10 kit, and a network of small mics and I can achieve true slack! No more getting off the couch to turn off the light or start the toaster. Now I need a Cye so I can shout, in a Cartman falsetto, "Hey! I want some PIE!" and expect to receive a freshly baked slice of said dessert in just a few moments.
I'm waiting for IBM to release their top-secret replicator technology. Then I won't have to order out for pizza again!
The future is now, and it keeps me from getting off my sorry ass.
Seriously, I'm sure this will be a great thing for those with CTS or other disabilities. Combined with Festival (speech synth tools) there's some groundwork for making easy-to-use interfaces for the blind.
Think on this:
1) Anything better than ultrawide SCSI is pointless for average users. Yes, you can crank out more performance with seven striped drives, but who really has the money.
2) Decent ultrawide controllers are relatively cheap (look at NCR/Symbios based cards.)
3) Smaller SCSI disks are getting very affordable, where small 10GB and cheap $200.
4) SCSI has lower CPU overhead and doesn't make your system slug along as the kernel babysits the disk transfers.
5) SCSI disks are usually made with higher MTBFs in mind.
6) Where do you need the performance? Swap, binaries, config files, libraries. Mostly swap.
7) Do you really need massive performance on the disks that hold your MP3 collection? Didn't think so.
8) IDE disks are shit cheap.
The moral? SCSI is slick. Don't spend too much on a controller or disks. Put your root on that disk. Then use IDE for all non-critical data.
They made rather failure prone drives IMHO. So does Maxtor. On the other hand, nothing beats an IBM drive.
That's news to me. Ever look into the other end of a telescope?
I remember using a pair of toy binoculars to catch ants on fire as a little kid.
Yep. Tanner's rocks. I picked up a couple of X-Band carts (the modem module for Super Nintendo and Genesis) for $2 there the other day. Get 'em while they're hot!
Bleargh. First Saturday has gone down the shitter. I've been going on and off for the last 10 years or so and it's been constantly downhill. I've even had my own booth there a couple of times. Not to sound like Grumpy Old Man, but it really was better before they opened it up to commercial vendors. It was cool back in the day when you could, in the same five minutes, score a HE-NE laser head and supply and a box of vintage HP calculators for less than $20. Now you see every surplus store bozo selling the same discontinued product as all the others.
Don't get me wrong... Come Saturday morning if I'm not too trashed I might head down there to see what's up. Since I moved to Austin I don't get to hit it as often as I'd like.
My recommendation for those who need to get their weird hardware fix: Tanner's Electronics, just off of 35E on Valwood. They've always got something odd.
I've got the 'WingMan' style at work. I haven't found anything else besides my trusty Trackman Marble that I feel comfortable using all day. I believe that its larger than average size allows you to push the buttons with the bases of your fingers without having them drag on the pad, rather than pushing with your fingertips at an odd (and uncomfortable) angle that most mice can force a user into. These are also good for gaming, as evidenced by the mouse of choice of those who place at the top in the occasional interdepartmental Q3fests.
But seriously folks, the 'WedgeMouse' as it's known by the locals, is worth picking up if you don't believe in trackballs.Otherwise, the Trackman Marble that many posters seem to have been recommending wins.