I own a panasonic toughbook model CF-47. fairly awesome beast with magnesium encased LCD panel and body shell, gel encased hard drive with shock absorbing mounts, motherboard on shock absorbing assembly, water resistant...the works. dropped it 3 months after i got it from a 3rd floor window onto concrete (dont ask how) along with my motorola flip-phone (old model...huge..they dont make em anymore). both of them survived. motorola phone had a tiny scar on the flip cover where it scraped against the concrete after it bounced several times. the panasonic toughbook bounced twice and the CD drive and floppy were smashed to a pulp. i replaced the cd drive with a dvd rom from a gateway and powered it up. smoke curled up from the machine so i powered it down, unplugged the floppy and repowered it up. worked fine. ignored the floppy since i never use it anyway (it was an LS-120 but what the heck).
8 months later my panasonic toughbook's backlight went. since its impossible to find anyone repairing them (and panasonic told me to fly a kite..no warranty) i converted it into a desktop and attached a monitor to it.
bottom line -- if you buy a toughbook make sure you HAVE A WARRANTY.
RAID 5 arrays dont help when two drives fail at the same time. heat or shock can do that.
Use RAID-51 or RAID-54...most Sun RAID arrays can be configured to do that.
Ive set up fiber channel SANs..and i have only one thing to say -- DONT DO IT!. EMC and other vendors might claim to set up SANs and get em up and running in a flash. in reality you spend an ungodly amount of cash to get the fiber hardware in, pay EMC and other vendors a huge amount to plug it all in and fire it up only to find that firmware needs to be reflashed because one EMC box has firmware problems and is at a different revision level than the other EMC box. once you get past the firmware nightmare (after paying EMC or any other SAN vendor a huge consulting fee per hour of course) you end up with a freaking unstable SAN nightmare which takes months to fix. unstable equipment, firmware bugs, login problems, you name it. use RAID5 -- its fast dependable and millions of companioes have used it without any problems. its also mature. i use ICP Vortex RAID-5 cards for low end boxes or Sun Storedge A5000 , A3500 or equivalent for midrange.
dont do SAN. at least not till it becomes mature.
you can do it all in software. i implemented a printbill (http://freshmeat.net/projects/printbill/) based system with debian print servers, postgresql for the database and printbill to handle the rest. printbill can also be obtained with apt-get install printbill and it gives stuff like per page toner accounting, coverage accounting and stuff for inkjet printers as well as lasers. very useful.
yep. i'll second that. ICP vortex also has linux utilities to control the cards from within linux instead of booting to DOS. i've never had any problems with vortex controllers. just make sure you use a stick of good (crucial or somesuch) ECC SDRAM for the cache memory. dont spare any expense for the cache memory. BTW, ive run them on AlphaLinux with the 164LX boards and SRM bioses. works great. A 21264 Alpha, a gig of RAM with a ICP Vortex card and 256 Megs of ECC cache on the card connected to an 8 drive arra cant be beat.
yep it does. to give you some rough numbers (these are VERY ROUGH)....
0.8 to 1 Mainframe MIPS for a Pentium 200.
10 Mainframe MIPS or more for a dual CPU gigahertz class Pentium-iii box.
IO Rates of 50 EXCP/second for an average PC disk I/O subsystem.
IO rates of over 500 EXCP/second for an average PC RAID array (hardware).
put these numbers and extrapolate to give you the mainframe equivalent to a PC.
think of this scenario. police squad/SWAT team wearing masks and black kevlar breaks into your house thinking that you are a potential drug dealer (they got the wrong house....oops..).
You and a bunch of people are having a get together after going into the woods and hunting deer. You and your friends have a bunch of rifles sitting around and think they are a bunch of burglars. You grab the weapons when you see them enter. They are surrounded by you and your friends who appear to be armed and dangerous.
what exactly are the SWAT team supposed to do ?
What are you going to do ?
they only need to do it with ONE BIOS manufacturer. phoenix. phoenix BIOSes run on 99.99% of all the PCs out there (most have custom splash startup screens so you rarely see the phoenix copyright) and if phoenix implements crypto there is nothing the OEMs can do since they all use phoenix bioses.
guys...dont try this. its a FAKE. and its possibly a TROJAN.
The PC DVD drives cant even read XBOX disks. i tried it out and it has a fancy splash screen and shit but it doesnt do anything with an XBOX DVD loaded. DONT DOWNLOAD IT. it seems to modify files (possibly). i whacked up a ghosted image of win on a spare PC and ran the software. it didnt do anything with an XBOX DVD and it seemed to modify a few files (i ran sentinel on the partition before and after running it). i dont knwo if it is a trojan..i just reghosted the entire machine in case.
been there done that. i used LDAP with kerberos and LPR/LPD (& CUPS which we finally moved to but we started with lpr/lpd for its simplicity...i recommend doing the same) on 15 print servers for 15,000 students. solution is working well after 1.5 yrs...15 print servers deployed which handle the load quite well. print servers have web based admin (lpr called by a cgi--not very secure but the print servers have CDROM based boot and no remote access stuff other than lpr/lpd so rooting em doesnt get anyone anything..no compiler and minimal debian distros on em). archiving print jobs is handled by a copy to an AFS server and the cron jobs clear the spooled files from the RAM drive every 24 hrs after doing the AFS copy.
its difficult to do that with software. why ? because software requires creativity and problem solving skills. automating calculations is easy because we know what the equation is. we just brute force more transistors at it and we can solve it faster.
that said i know what youre getting at and its oable but not easy. see the following papers...might help you -
http://fare.tunes.org/articles/ll99/mpfas.html
http://www.emn.fr/cs/object/biblio/publications/ ho sc01.ps.gz
http://plaza.powersurfr.com/jsavard/math/undint. ht m
huh ? i thought the java documentation was the most clear cut braindead documentation any company could ever produce.
whats there to it ? its just :
Class name
...random garbage on what it does...
how to instantiate it
function1..some random explanation
function2.. ditto
hear hear. thats a fairly brilliant summary of the state of software today (and for the future as long as microsoft maintains its monopoly). the only goo things i see coming out of this is that open source software *has* to be written since the users have no choice except to write their own code.
yeah but smartwheels were supposed to be mounted on skateboards. not on a scooter-like ungainly 65lb beast powered by batteries.
put two large wheels on the side of a skateboard, add the smart electronics and give it a top speed of 60mph and hell - i'll buy one.
Re:This guy should be develpoing laptops...
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
they arent CPUs. they are dedicated DSPs & ASIC chips. look on any DSP manufacturers page and you should be able to get that much processing power to run on less power than that. they're specialised processors only..not general purpose microprocessors. they do only one given thing well.
hmm..i would suggest just dumping it on sourceforge with an entry in the LSM and freshmeat. eventually someone will come along, send you an email and fork or pick up your project. i know ive done it once before...i found a dead project (not updated for 3 years) on the LSM, picked it up and integrated it into one of my projects i was using and cleaned and modernised it. then released a new version of it and im actively maintaining it since its integrated into one of my projects. as long as its GPL someone will find bits of it useful and pick it up. it may take a long time but if the code is in decent condition someone will put the effort required and use it. just make sure you have a relatively easy build process (even if you have no makefile a script helps) and write clean blocks of code (you dont need to doument -- you *do* need to have sane functions with meaningful names on the variables).
packet radio (AX.25) is meant for really slow links like 1200bps or 9600bps max. youre not going to stuff 64 kbits thru a MHz link using a packet radio. best use 802.11 at 2.4GHz and 5GHz (for g)...20 miles should be easily doable with a good antenna or repeater.
hardocp has high resolution pictures of the chips including the traces and the VGA to TV conversion unit on the board. soldering will work but i wouldnt want to try it -- a hauppage wintv board in the computer (or over a USB port..the USB convertor is $80 or so) is a much better solution. its not worth messing around with a $400 piece of hardware and estroying it when a $80 add on will do it for you.
ICP Vortex. Installed em with no problems (bought 4 of them). they work great. 128MB cache and 5 seperate channels per card (bought the midrange). you can boot off them and they rock. i recommend ICP-vortex over any other RAID card.
its easy to set up a small rubber pad with the key symbols stuck on it so you get tactile feedback with a rollable non electronic pad which you can carry around.
just unroll it on the nearest surface and start typing on the rubber. tactile feedback and true spillproof keyboard with no electronics. just chuck it in a washing machine to clean it.
get a standalone GPS unit (a magellan(sp?)) works great with the palmpilot. also try and get a standalone scanner. if your parts break in the field its easier to replace standalone components than a palmpilot.
they (scanner + GPS) work over the serial port and use fairly simple 7 bit data transfer over well documented protocols so you should be ok.
yeah but most people who work on open source projects deal with it by ignoring bullshit. heck i deal with it all the time too. that doesnt mean i give up. i just deal.
looks like this guy cracked under pressure. come on people. put your flame suppressing clothes on and wear a thick skin and then start an open source project. its not for sensitive types.
be an asshole - youre doing something for the community for free. the community can deal with it whether it wants to or not.
my acer 4x cd writer plugged into my USB 1.1 port has yet to produce a coaster even though my machine is a p2-366 with 128 megs of ram and a slow ass notebook hdd.
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as shown in full gory detail here. note the counterweight too.
I own a panasonic toughbook model CF-47. fairly awesome beast with magnesium encased LCD panel and body shell, gel encased hard drive with shock absorbing mounts, motherboard on shock absorbing assembly, water resistant...the works. dropped it 3 months after i got it from a 3rd floor window onto concrete (dont ask how) along with my motorola flip-phone (old model ...huge..they dont make em anymore). both of them survived. motorola phone had a tiny scar on the flip cover where it scraped against the concrete after it bounced several times. the panasonic toughbook bounced twice and the CD drive and floppy were smashed to a pulp. i replaced the cd drive with a dvd rom from a gateway and powered it up. smoke curled up from the machine so i powered it down, unplugged the floppy and repowered it up. worked fine. ignored the floppy since i never use it anyway (it was an LS-120 but what the heck).
8 months later my panasonic toughbook's backlight went. since its impossible to find anyone repairing them (and panasonic told me to fly a kite..no warranty) i converted it into a desktop and attached a monitor to it.
bottom line -- if you buy a toughbook make sure you HAVE A WARRANTY.
RAID 5 arrays dont help when two drives fail at the same time. heat or shock can do that.
Use RAID-51 or RAID-54...most Sun RAID arrays can be configured to do that.
Ive set up fiber channel SANs..and i have only one thing to say -- DONT DO IT!. EMC and other vendors might claim to set up SANs and get em up and running in a flash. in reality you spend an ungodly amount of cash to get the fiber hardware in, pay EMC and other vendors a huge amount to plug it all in and fire it up only to find that firmware needs to be reflashed because one EMC box has firmware problems and is at a different revision level than the other EMC box. once you get past the firmware nightmare (after paying EMC or any other SAN vendor a huge consulting fee per hour of course) you end up with a freaking unstable SAN nightmare which takes months to fix. unstable equipment, firmware bugs, login problems, you name it. use RAID5 -- its fast dependable and millions of companioes have used it without any problems. its also mature. i use ICP Vortex RAID-5 cards for low end boxes or Sun Storedge A5000 , A3500 or equivalent for midrange.
dont do SAN. at least not till it becomes mature.
you can do it all in software. i implemented a printbill (http://freshmeat.net/projects/printbill/) based system with debian print servers, postgresql for the database and printbill to handle the rest. printbill can also be obtained with apt-get install printbill and it gives stuff like per page toner accounting, coverage accounting and stuff for inkjet printers as well as lasers. very useful.
yep. i'll second that. ICP vortex also has linux utilities to control the cards from within linux instead of booting to DOS. i've never had any problems with vortex controllers. just make sure you use a stick of good (crucial or somesuch) ECC SDRAM for the cache memory. dont spare any expense for the cache memory. BTW, ive run them on AlphaLinux with the 164LX boards and SRM bioses. works great. A 21264 Alpha, a gig of RAM with a ICP Vortex card and 256 Megs of ECC cache on the card connected to an 8 drive arra cant be beat.
yep it does. to give you some rough numbers (these are VERY ROUGH)....
0.8 to 1 Mainframe MIPS for a Pentium 200.
10 Mainframe MIPS or more for a dual CPU gigahertz class Pentium-iii box.
IO Rates of 50 EXCP/second for an average PC disk I/O subsystem.
IO rates of over 500 EXCP/second for an average PC RAID array (hardware).
put these numbers and extrapolate to give you the mainframe equivalent to a PC.
think of this scenario. police squad/SWAT team wearing masks and black kevlar breaks into your house thinking that you are a potential drug dealer (they got the wrong house....oops..).
You and a bunch of people are having a get together after going into the woods and hunting deer. You and your friends have a bunch of rifles sitting around and think they are a bunch of burglars. You grab the weapons when you see them enter. They are surrounded by you and your friends who appear to be armed and dangerous.
what exactly are the SWAT team supposed to do ?
What are you going to do ?
very true. its also a perfect time for its release given the current climate. perfectly timed too. fairly impressive.
they only need to do it with ONE BIOS manufacturer. phoenix. phoenix BIOSes run on 99.99% of all the PCs out there (most have custom splash startup screens so you rarely see the phoenix copyright) and if phoenix implements crypto there is nothing the OEMs can do since they all use phoenix bioses.
guys...dont try this. its a FAKE. and its possibly a TROJAN.
The PC DVD drives cant even read XBOX disks. i tried it out and it has a fancy splash screen and shit but it doesnt do anything with an XBOX DVD loaded. DONT DOWNLOAD IT. it seems to modify files (possibly). i whacked up a ghosted image of win on a spare PC and ran the software. it didnt do anything with an XBOX DVD and it seemed to modify a few files (i ran sentinel on the partition before and after running it). i dont knwo if it is a trojan..i just reghosted the entire machine in case.
been there done that. i used LDAP with kerberos and LPR/LPD (& CUPS which we finally moved to but we started with lpr/lpd for its simplicity...i recommend doing the same) on 15 print servers for 15,000 students. solution is working well after 1.5 yrs...15 print servers deployed which handle the load quite well. print servers have web based admin (lpr called by a cgi--not very secure but the print servers have CDROM based boot and no remote access stuff other than lpr/lpd so rooting em doesnt get anyone anything..no compiler and minimal debian distros on em). archiving print jobs is handled by a copy to an AFS server and the cron jobs clear the spooled files from the RAM drive every 24 hrs after doing the AFS copy.
its difficult to do that with software. why ? because software requires creativity and problem solving skills. automating calculations is easy because we know what the equation is. we just brute force more transistors at it and we can solve it faster./ ho sc01.ps.gz
. ht m
that said i know what youre getting at and its oable but not easy. see the following papers...might help you -
http://fare.tunes.org/articles/ll99/mpfas.html
http://www.emn.fr/cs/object/biblio/publications
http://plaza.powersurfr.com/jsavard/math/undint
huh ? i thought the java documentation was the most clear cut braindead documentation any company could ever produce.
...random garbage on what it does...
..some random explanation
.. ditto
whats there to it ? its just :
Class name
how to instantiate it
function1
function2
thats it.
hear hear. thats a fairly brilliant summary of the state of software today (and for the future as long as microsoft maintains its monopoly). the only goo things i see coming out of this is that open source software *has* to be written since the users have no choice except to write their own code.
yeah but smartwheels were supposed to be mounted on skateboards. not on a scooter-like ungainly 65lb beast powered by batteries.
put two large wheels on the side of a skateboard, add the smart electronics and give it a top speed of 60mph and hell - i'll buy one.
they arent CPUs. they are dedicated DSPs & ASIC chips. look on any DSP manufacturers page and you should be able to get that much processing power to run on less power than that. they're specialised processors only..not general purpose microprocessors. they do only one given thing well.
hmm..i would suggest just dumping it on sourceforge with an entry in the LSM and freshmeat. eventually someone will come along, send you an email and fork or pick up your project. i know ive done it once before...i found a dead project (not updated for 3 years) on the LSM, picked it up and integrated it into one of my projects i was using and cleaned and modernised it. then released a new version of it and im actively maintaining it since its integrated into one of my projects. as long as its GPL someone will find bits of it useful and pick it up. it may take a long time but if the code is in decent condition someone will put the effort required and use it. just make sure you have a relatively easy build process (even if you have no makefile a script helps) and write clean blocks of code (you dont need to doument -- you *do* need to have sane functions with meaningful names on the variables).
packet radio (AX.25) is meant for really slow links like 1200bps or 9600bps max. youre not going to stuff 64 kbits thru a MHz link using a packet radio. best use 802.11 at 2.4GHz and 5GHz (for g) ...20 miles should be easily doable with a good antenna or repeater.
hardocp has high resolution pictures of the chips including the traces and the VGA to TV conversion unit on the board. soldering will work but i wouldnt want to try it -- a hauppage wintv board in the computer (or over a USB port..the USB convertor is $80 or so) is a much better solution. its not worth messing around with a $400 piece of hardware and estroying it when a $80 add on will do it for you.
ICP Vortex. Installed em with no problems (bought 4 of them). they work great. 128MB cache and 5 seperate channels per card (bought the midrange). you can boot off them and they rock. i recommend ICP-vortex over any other RAID card.
its easy to set up a small rubber pad with the key symbols stuck on it so you get tactile feedback with a rollable non electronic pad which you can carry around.
just unroll it on the nearest surface and start typing on the rubber. tactile feedback and true spillproof keyboard with no electronics. just chuck it in a washing machine to clean it.
get a standalone GPS unit (a magellan(sp?)) works great with the palmpilot. also try and get a standalone scanner. if your parts break in the field its easier to replace standalone components than a palmpilot.
they (scanner + GPS) work over the serial port and use fairly simple 7 bit data transfer over well documented protocols so you should be ok.
yeah but most people who work on open source projects deal with it by ignoring bullshit. heck i deal with it all the time too. that doesnt mean i give up. i just deal.
looks like this guy cracked under pressure. come on people. put your flame suppressing clothes on and wear a thick skin and then start an open source project. its not for sensitive types.
be an asshole - youre doing something for the community for free. the community can deal with it whether it wants to or not.
my acer 4x cd writer plugged into my USB 1.1 port has yet to produce a coaster even though my machine is a p2-366 with 128 megs of ram and a slow ass notebook hdd.