I grabbed an "old" Alpha 21164PC 533Mhz/mainboard for $250 a while back. Miles faster than the Multia, and fits in an ATX case. Run it with standard PC hardware (ATA controllers built in). I haven't seen them for that cheap recently, but there's usually an auction on eBay once in a while.
The horribly poor writing on the site (worse than some of those badly translated tech manuals), it lists a bunch of things in the FAQ that are sort of worrysome... It will restore Linux, but not with instant recovery mode. Oh, yeah, and "DO NOT install other partition software or hardware that is not provided by MS-DOS FDISK." Sounds harsh. It also specifies a number of specific sizes for NTFS partitions (up to and including a whopping 2200MB)... If you are running NT (even WS), you generally have more disk space than that. If you aure using IDE, don't even think about having your CD-ROM on the same cable as your HD, or your CD-ROM won't show up?!
Seems like an interesting product, but when your website could be grammar fixed by first graders... here are some good ones:
"To memorize your supervisor password is very important."
"Win-NT is for the NTFS file system. Please set the partition size as follows: 800MB, 900MB, 1100MB, 1300MB, 1600MB, 1800MB, 2100MB, 2200MB." Good thing they made NT, otherwise NTFS would have gone unused... or is it that NTFS is for Win-NT?
"This colon mark is important to avoid abnormal marks appear in Windows device manager."
Come on, the Octium is the Pentium VIII, the Septium would be the Pentium VII;-)
True, without a clock, even chips from the same wafer could run at vastly different speeds. We see some of that effect from standard CPU builds - i.e. The old PMMX-166 -> 233MHz chips were all made at the same time, and marked according to what they could do (or how many of the slower ones they needed to sell). Basic qualification would be more extensive - no longer can you verify that a specific suite of tests completes with the chip at a certain clock speed, now you have to time the various ops and give each chip some rating based on that, and they wouldn't be very consistent. A much easier process when you only have a few choices to pick from, rather than a sliding scale.
Plus, the interleaving of the syncronous and async domains of the chip could be very interesting. PLLs are great when you have a few regions (say two different speed PCI busses into one chip, along with a memory bus at a third speed)... clocks gan gain you a lot in terms of simulation abilities, too. Tough to sim a chip when the process *really* makes a big difference in the delays.
Ah yes, Wintel beat Apple... but for the people who had Beta and Apple in 1985... well, you can still buy Apples (and really, the PowerPC chip is a better processor architecture than the x86... the Altivec stuff is nice, but that does limit the peak speeds of the chip).
I knew what you were getting at, but unlike Beta (which was quite a bit better, but good old corporate politics and licensing killed it), Alpha and x86 don't completely overlap in the same app space. Something about 64bit data, 64b PCI, and a much better FPU than the x86 line (and stable as hell, too). DEC dropped the ball, and Compaq hasn't pushed things as much as we'd like, but really, an 833MHZ 21264 rates 590 base/650 peak in specfp2000, while a 1.5GHz P4 rates 543/552, a 1GHZ P-III a 292/304, and a 1.2GHz Athlon 304/342. Stable, tested, available hardware (the high speed alphas have been around a lot longer than the P4 and higher speed P3s have been almost working). There are some very good uses for what I term real hardware, and there are still plenty of installations out there. Free software is one of the great ideas. GCC isn't so hot for fp performance on Alphas (something I'd like to help along), but the DEC/Compaq compiler is cheap, and running Tru64 is slick. The idea is to help Linux do what it needs to. I've got a nearly four year old low-end Alpha here (my 21164PC test box) that can still rock with the best of them
Also, by my count there are far less S/390 mainframes, AS/400s, RS/6000s, O2s, and E10ks than Wintel boxes, so I guess everyone should just give up on those too... damn Superior Technology X, Y, and Z.
See, that's my problem - the install goes well (it seems), then I reboot... kernel decompresses and loads, then when init is starting, I see an error telling me that libreadline can't be found, and things grind to a screeching halt, ending with a very fun "no processes left in this runlevel message". I was planning on getting the new stuff off of Cooker as soon as I was up, but I never got so far as a login... and the installer only gives four choices for network cards, so I need to wait until my system is up to configure that (or I could go get a Tulip/3c595/PCINe2000/whatever the fourth choice is that I don't have). No big deal, but kind of a pain. Also, when the install asks for the 2nd (ext) CD, it doesn't unlock the drive... so you can't put any of those RPMS on at install time. Unless there is some (undocumented) reason why I can't load the kernel with Milo...
I haven't had much time to scour lots of places for help, but if the install is broken before I get up and running... my MD5 sum matched for the iso, too, so I haven't tried pulling that down again and reburning - it'll take a while.
I say that from personal experience, especially my travails this past week. It actually runs (more than I can say for Mandrake 7.1/Alpha (maybe I just have a bad CD, but it doesn't seem that way), but RH7.0/Alpha (which was the newest iso I could find) has some problems which can be fixed, but I have been looking for newer, less broken packages from an 'out of the box' kind of config...
Yeah, I've used FreeBSD on the system for a while, and I was hoping that I could get some newer Linux iso images to test out on the one system, to see how things have improved for Alpha. The older RH installs (6.2) worked fine, but since there's been a lot of improvements in the x86 space, I was looking forward to a lot of goodness in the alpha arena. Some of the previous problems I hope would have been cleared up, since they were pretty basic (and seemed to be distro based, rather than kernel-based).
>Interesting? I guess that's debatable. I've always thought any game that ostensibly lasts an hour and then takes 3 to play isn't particularly 'action-packed'
Blame that on the commercials and other media/income related things. If you watch a high school football game, or non-mass-media-televised college game, it takes significantly less than three hours. I played soccer when I was younger (and somewhat through college), and football when my joints were healthier, and I'd definitely call football more action-packed than soccer. As for athleticism, that depends on the players, but football was far more physically taxing, with greater balance required in many cases. Soccer was always far less interesting to watch or play than baseball, and most people consider that slow, but (again, media-related extended time-outs aside) there's a heck of a lot more going on in baseball than soccer. Cricket is definitely omre exciting than soccer, too. I didn't start out trying to blast the sport, but it really does rank fairly low on the list... but it's the game where you really don't need very much equipment to play, and the intial skill level makes it easy (the ball just stays on the ground if you miss).
The WWF/WCW isn't real, everyone knows it isn't real, and despite that, people still watch it (must be funny to see steroid-built guys wail o neach other).
>Besides, we're not exactly dropping like flies every Saturday
I can only assume you meal the XFL... not the highest talent level there, and not a great product... heck, if my back and knees were better, I could probably get on one of those teams, but I'd end up making less than I am at engineering, barring an amazing 'XFL championship'... bleh.
Well, the gates on high-speed CMOS transistors can be in the 10-20 atom range. The other parts of the transistor (source, drain) are usually quite a bit larger, since they are embedded in the silicon wafer, rather than built on top of it. Gates and wires are usually the limiting factors in semiconductor processing.
Note my other comment that Mandrake 7.1 seems very broken on my Alphas, and there hasn't been a release of 7.2 for Alpha... leaving me short of options.
I may be on the road to Turbolinux, but their Alpha distro looks even more dated... --
I wish somebody had a current distro for Alpha. The latest I can find is RH7.0 (brokenish) or Mandrake 7.1 (won't reboot after install - can't find libreadline5). Kind of a pain for those of us running Alphas... I'd love to see a distro release with 2.4.x sometime in the near future. --
Have you tried cooking your own meals? Cheaper, and more healthy - you can do a lot better than 16g fat for the small size of a Beef Burrito Supreme, that's for sure...
In Minnesota, any beer bought at a grocery store is 3.2% alcohol by volume. You have to head to a liquor store to get the full strength stuff. That, and liquor stores aren't open on Sundays (and close early on weekdays (8-10pm)). Makes it tough to get last minute supplies for a Superbowl party...
For Canada, you should probably mention the much higher taxes (relative to the US), and goverment sourced health care... I'll disagree with the cheese statement, though. "American Cheese" (otherwise known as little kid oil + milk cheese food product) doesn't count, but there's some really great cheese made in the US (better than the Canadian cheese I've had, most definitely).
50% of your mice fail with cable problems after a few months? And you are doing what with the cable??? I know a lot of high intensity Quake types, and I haven't seen cable problems that often.
I would still reccomend a trackball, especially for gaming. With a little practice, turns can be executed more quickly and (I think) more accurately than with a mouse. I know my play improved quite drastically (alas, I haven't had the time in the past year or so... my skills are probably worn down). Easier to keep clean, doesn't mind getting dirty nearly as much as a mouse... My Trackman Marble (three buttons - pre-scroll wheel) was of great benefit to me ergonomically as well... Don't know why you wouldn't want a trackball, and I certainly wouldn't dismiss the importance of ergonomics - it pays off in the long run.
Oh well, just my $.02 (that was before the jump in the CPI, of course). --
Yeah, I loved my FastLoad cartridge... it sure made things a lot happier. The trick was to get the 128 when it came out with the built in 1571 drive (quite fast, relatively), and use the 1541 as the second drive (we had a toggle switch wired up so you could change the drive # quickly, in case you needed both the 64 and 128 to have one drive each...)
Well, if you are going the sandpaper route, you might as well drop the platters (or the whole drive) in some nice strong acid, or possible a smelting furnace... that should take of it.
I don't disagree that it was an excellent book, and I do think that there are many early high-schoolers that can handle it, but in an English class (not even a real Literature course), I think that it was inappropriate at that level. Just because the students in the course are more intellectually advanced than their peers, at that age, emotional developement isn't always on the same scale. I can safely say that a good 15-20% of our class was not prepared for that book, and I remember it creating quite a furor among the parents of those students (one girl in particualr ad trouble sleeping for some time after reading certain parts). There is a difference between assigning a book for study in order to educate, and doing just to scare/disturb your students (which seemed to be this teacher's aim, given a lot of the other evidence). I also think that Huckleberry Finn wasn't nearly as disturbing, but still had a strong impact on the topic of race relations. Much of the violence in TPB was gratuitous, and I think it dampened the 'message' and the effect of the themes the author tried to convey.
I think it is a book that should be read by those who can take it objectively, and handle it. The writing itself wasn't very good (IMHO), but the ideas and themes are somewhat important, but you get the sense from reading it that the author had some tremendous problems.
As for Americans' sense (or lack thereof) of nationalism... that is a another story, and shall be told at a another time... --
I do not disagree that learning about the Holocaust is a Very Good Thing(tm) for all high school students. I disagree with the presentation of the topic, and the fact that a year of an English course ends up nearly entirely devoted to a historical subject, and that anyone even exhibiting any new/original/different thoughts on the topics would be graded down.
I do think that there was plenty of approprate subject material to teach a class from regarding the issues that she was trying to teach. For example, my paper was based on Leon Uris' _Mila 18_, which would have been a far better curriculum book than _The Painted Bird_ (Jerzey Kosinski), which is (as I said in my previous post) not a book that one should be forced to read, but one of choice. _Maus_ was at the Museum of Modern History around the time that I was in this particular class, and I agree that most books concerning the Holocaust are disturbing (especially the good ones), there are several portions of _The Painted Bird_ that I would never force anyone to read (notably the travails of Stupid Ludmilla), since there are better, more topically relevant sources for Holocaust education.
The biggest problem wiht situations like this is the presentation. It would be difficult to argue against exposing our students to the ideas, but the material used for that purpose and how the teacher presents the material and themselves. --
I had an English teacher in sophomore year of high school who forced all of her students to do their term papers on books regarding the Holocaust, which isn't of itself wrong, but she handled it somewhat similarly to your teacher's flag-burning paper (though I doubt anyone was planning on siding with the aforementioned events). She also had the students read (what I thought at the time of reading it was) inappropriate material for an early high school curriculum (namely, _The Painted Bird_, which is to this day one of the most disturbed books I have ever read). The material and some of the graphic impressions in that book (besides the beastiality and rape images) should not be forced on anyone - reading material that strong should be a choice, since (even in an honors course) at that age, there are many students who are emotionally unprepared for such a thing. I wouldn't object to the book being in the school library, but as a part of the curriculum, is had/s no place.
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I grabbed an "old" Alpha 21164PC 533Mhz/mainboard for $250 a while back. Miles faster than the Multia, and fits in an ATX case. Run it with standard PC hardware (ATA controllers built in). I haven't seen them for that cheap recently, but there's usually an auction on eBay once in a while.
--
The horribly poor writing on the site (worse than some of those badly translated tech manuals), it lists a bunch of things in the FAQ that are sort of worrysome... It will restore Linux, but not with instant recovery mode. Oh, yeah, and "DO NOT install other partition software or hardware that is not provided by MS-DOS FDISK." Sounds harsh. It also specifies a number of specific sizes for NTFS partitions (up to and including a whopping 2200MB)... If you are running NT (even WS), you generally have more disk space than that. If you aure using IDE, don't even think about having your CD-ROM on the same cable as your HD, or your CD-ROM won't show up?!
Seems like an interesting product, but when your website could be grammar fixed by first graders... here are some good ones:
"To memorize your supervisor password is very important."
"Win-NT is for the NTFS file system. Please set the partition size as follows: 800MB, 900MB, 1100MB, 1300MB, 1600MB, 1800MB, 2100MB, 2200MB." Good thing they made NT, otherwise NTFS would have gone unused... or is it that NTFS is for Win-NT?
"This colon mark is important to avoid abnormal marks appear in Windows device manager."
--
Come on, the Octium is the Pentium VIII, the Septium would be the Pentium VII ;-)
True, without a clock, even chips from the same wafer could run at vastly different speeds. We see some of that effect from standard CPU builds - i.e. The old PMMX-166 -> 233MHz chips were all made at the same time, and marked according to what they could do (or how many of the slower ones they needed to sell). Basic qualification would be more extensive - no longer can you verify that a specific suite of tests completes with the chip at a certain clock speed, now you have to time the various ops and give each chip some rating based on that, and they wouldn't be very consistent. A much easier process when you only have a few choices to pick from, rather than a sliding scale.
Plus, the interleaving of the syncronous and async domains of the chip could be very interesting. PLLs are great when you have a few regions (say two different speed PCI busses into one chip, along with a memory bus at a third speed)... clocks gan gain you a lot in terms of simulation abilities, too. Tough to sim a chip when the process *really* makes a big difference in the delays.
--
Ah yes, Wintel beat Apple... but for the people who had Beta and Apple in 1985... well, you can still buy Apples (and really, the PowerPC chip is a better processor architecture than the x86... the Altivec stuff is nice, but that does limit the peak speeds of the chip).
I knew what you were getting at, but unlike Beta (which was quite a bit better, but good old corporate politics and licensing killed it), Alpha and x86 don't completely overlap in the same app space. Something about 64bit data, 64b PCI, and a much better FPU than the x86 line (and stable as hell, too). DEC dropped the ball, and Compaq hasn't pushed things as much as we'd like, but really, an 833MHZ 21264 rates 590 base/650 peak in specfp2000, while a 1.5GHz P4 rates 543/552, a 1GHZ P-III a 292/304, and a 1.2GHz Athlon 304/342. Stable, tested, available hardware (the high speed alphas have been around a lot longer than the P4 and higher speed P3s have been almost working). There are some very good uses for what I term real hardware, and there are still plenty of installations out there. Free software is one of the great ideas. GCC isn't so hot for fp performance on Alphas (something I'd like to help along), but the DEC/Compaq compiler is cheap, and running Tru64 is slick. The idea is to help Linux do what it needs to. I've got a nearly four year old low-end Alpha here (my 21164PC test box) that can still rock with the best of them
Also, by my count there are far less S/390 mainframes, AS/400s, RS/6000s, O2s, and E10ks than Wintel boxes, so I guess everyone should just give up on those too... damn Superior Technology X, Y, and Z.
--
See, that's my problem - the install goes well (it seems), then I reboot... kernel decompresses and loads, then when init is starting, I see an error telling me that libreadline can't be found, and things grind to a screeching halt, ending with a very fun "no processes left in this runlevel message". I was planning on getting the new stuff off of Cooker as soon as I was up, but I never got so far as a login... and the installer only gives four choices for network cards, so I need to wait until my system is up to configure that (or I could go get a Tulip/3c595/PCINe2000/whatever the fourth choice is that I don't have). No big deal, but kind of a pain. Also, when the install asks for the 2nd (ext) CD, it doesn't unlock the drive... so you can't put any of those RPMS on at install time. Unless there is some (undocumented) reason why I can't load the kernel with Milo...
I haven't had much time to scour lots of places for help, but if the install is broken before I get up and running... my MD5 sum matched for the iso, too, so I haven't tried pulling that down again and reburning - it'll take a while.
--
I say that from personal experience, especially my travails this past week. It actually runs (more than I can say for Mandrake 7.1/Alpha (maybe I just have a bad CD, but it doesn't seem that way), but RH7.0/Alpha (which was the newest iso I could find) has some problems which can be fixed, but I have been looking for newer, less broken packages from an 'out of the box' kind of config...
--
Yeah, I've used FreeBSD on the system for a while, and I was hoping that I could get some newer Linux iso images to test out on the one system, to see how things have improved for Alpha. The older RH installs (6.2) worked fine, but since there's been a lot of improvements in the x86 space, I was looking forward to a lot of goodness in the alpha arena. Some of the previous problems I hope would have been cleared up, since they were pretty basic (and seemed to be distro based, rather than kernel-based).
--
Do the words "Real Hardware" mean anything to you?
--
>Interesting? I guess that's debatable. I've always thought any game that ostensibly lasts an hour and then takes 3 to play isn't particularly 'action-packed'
Blame that on the commercials and other media/income related things. If you watch a high school football game, or non-mass-media-televised college game, it takes significantly less than three hours. I played soccer when I was younger (and somewhat through college), and football when my joints were healthier, and I'd definitely call football more action-packed than soccer. As for athleticism, that depends on the players, but football was far more physically taxing, with greater balance required in many cases. Soccer was always far less interesting to watch or play than baseball, and most people consider that slow, but (again, media-related extended time-outs aside) there's a heck of a lot more going on in baseball than soccer. Cricket is definitely omre exciting than soccer, too. I didn't start out trying to blast the sport, but it really does rank fairly low on the list... but it's the game where you really don't need very much equipment to play, and the intial skill level makes it easy (the ball just stays on the ground if you miss).
The WWF/WCW isn't real, everyone knows it isn't real, and despite that, people still watch it (must be funny to see steroid-built guys wail o neach other).
>Besides, we're not exactly dropping like flies every Saturday
I can only assume you meal the XFL... not the highest talent level there, and not a great product... heck, if my back and knees were better, I could probably get on one of those teams, but I'd end up making less than I am at engineering, barring an amazing 'XFL championship'... bleh.
--
Well, the gates on high-speed CMOS transistors can be in the 10-20 atom range. The other parts of the transistor (source, drain) are usually quite a bit larger, since they are embedded in the silicon wafer, rather than built on top of it. Gates and wires are usually the limiting factors in semiconductor processing.
--
Note my other comment that Mandrake 7.1 seems very broken on my Alphas, and there hasn't been a release of 7.2 for Alpha... leaving me short of options.
I may be on the road to Turbolinux, but their Alpha distro looks even more dated...
--
I wish somebody had a current distro for Alpha. The latest I can find is RH7.0 (brokenish) or Mandrake 7.1 (won't reboot after install - can't find libreadline5). Kind of a pain for those of us running Alphas... I'd love to see a distro release with 2.4.x sometime in the near future.
--
Have you tried cooking your own meals? Cheaper, and more healthy - you can do a lot better than 16g fat for the small size of a Beef Burrito Supreme, that's for sure...
--
Just think: Neutrino Cheese (now available from Alto).
--
In Minnesota, any beer bought at a grocery store is 3.2% alcohol by volume. You have to head to a liquor store to get the full strength stuff. That, and liquor stores aren't open on Sundays (and close early on weekdays (8-10pm)). Makes it tough to get last minute supplies for a Superbowl party...
--
Ah yes, Seattle. Nothing like a large riot every now and then to show you what civilization is :)
--
For Canada, you should probably mention the much higher taxes (relative to the US), and goverment sourced health care... I'll disagree with the cheese statement, though. "American Cheese" (otherwise known as little kid oil + milk cheese food product) doesn't count, but there's some really great cheese made in the US (better than the Canadian cheese I've had, most definitely).
--
Here's a 'symantic' conversion
;-)
s/symantic/semantic
--
Hehe 8^) I hadn't considered the pet angle... Glad to know that the crests grow back after a scalping, too :)
--
50% of your mice fail with cable problems after a few months? And you are doing what with the cable??? I know a lot of high intensity Quake types, and I haven't seen cable problems that often.
I would still reccomend a trackball, especially for gaming. With a little practice, turns can be executed more quickly and (I think) more accurately than with a mouse. I know my play improved quite drastically (alas, I haven't had the time in the past year or so... my skills are probably worn down). Easier to keep clean, doesn't mind getting dirty nearly as much as a mouse... My Trackman Marble (three buttons - pre-scroll wheel) was of great benefit to me ergonomically as well... Don't know why you wouldn't want a trackball, and I certainly wouldn't dismiss the importance of ergonomics - it pays off in the long run.
Oh well, just my $.02 (that was before the jump in the CPI, of course).
--
Yeah, I loved my FastLoad cartridge... it sure made things a lot happier. The trick was to get the 128 when it came out with the built in 1571 drive (quite fast, relatively), and use the 1541 as the second drive (we had a toggle switch wired up so you could change the drive # quickly, in case you needed both the 64 and 128 to have one drive each...)
--
Well, if you are going the sandpaper route, you might as well drop the platters (or the whole drive) in some nice strong acid, or possible a smelting furnace... that should take of it.
--
I don't disagree that it was an excellent book, and I do think that there are many early high-schoolers that can handle it, but in an English class (not even a real Literature course), I think that it was inappropriate at that level. Just because the students in the course are more intellectually advanced than their peers, at that age, emotional developement isn't always on the same scale. I can safely say that a good 15-20% of our class was not prepared for that book, and I remember it creating quite a furor among the parents of those students (one girl in particualr ad trouble sleeping for some time after reading certain parts). There is a difference between assigning a book for study in order to educate, and doing just to scare/disturb your students (which seemed to be this teacher's aim, given a lot of the other evidence). I also think that Huckleberry Finn wasn't nearly as disturbing, but still had a strong impact on the topic of race relations. Much of the violence in TPB was gratuitous, and I think it dampened the 'message' and the effect of the themes the author tried to convey.
I think it is a book that should be read by those who can take it objectively, and handle it. The writing itself wasn't very good (IMHO), but the ideas and themes are somewhat important, but you get the sense from reading it that the author had some tremendous problems.
As for Americans' sense (or lack thereof) of nationalism... that is a another story, and shall be told at a another time...
--
I do not disagree that learning about the Holocaust is a Very Good Thing(tm) for all high school students. I disagree with the presentation of the topic, and the fact that a year of an English course ends up nearly entirely devoted to a historical subject, and that anyone even exhibiting any new/original/different thoughts on the topics would be graded down.
I do think that there was plenty of approprate subject material to teach a class from regarding the issues that she was trying to teach. For example, my paper was based on Leon Uris' _Mila 18_, which would have been a far better curriculum book than _The Painted Bird_ (Jerzey Kosinski), which is (as I said in my previous post) not a book that one should be forced to read, but one of choice. _Maus_ was at the Museum of Modern History around the time that I was in this particular class, and I agree that most books concerning the Holocaust are disturbing (especially the good ones), there are several portions of _The Painted Bird_ that I would never force anyone to read (notably the travails of Stupid Ludmilla), since there are better, more topically relevant sources for Holocaust education.
The biggest problem wiht situations like this is the presentation. It would be difficult to argue against exposing our students to the ideas, but the material used for that purpose and how the teacher presents the material and themselves.
--
I had an English teacher in sophomore year of high school who forced all of her students to do their term papers on books regarding the Holocaust, which isn't of itself wrong, but she handled it somewhat similarly to your teacher's flag-burning paper (though I doubt anyone was planning on siding with the aforementioned events). She also had the students read (what I thought at the time of reading it was) inappropriate material for an early high school curriculum (namely, _The Painted Bird_, which is to this day one of the most disturbed books I have ever read). The material and some of the graphic impressions in that book (besides the beastiality and rape images) should not be forced on anyone - reading material that strong should be a choice, since (even in an honors course) at that age, there are many students who are emotionally unprepared for such a thing. I wouldn't object to the book being in the school library, but as a part of the curriculum, is had/s no place.
--