I feel that the "lego" comparison is a bit flawed - this to me suggests a completly sealed box which stores data, power being inductively coupled, data through RF, etc. Also, lego is designed to be built, taken apart, built again.
This system is meant to have 27 cubes in a 3x3x3 cube, and when part fails, it is supposed to remain in place. Low latencies and high throughput are due to their being interconnected to the surrounding bricks.
First issue here is, that people don't like seeing things fail, and leaving them. This thing contains a "fast x86 processor", a gig of ram, (later on) six port Infiniband switches, plus all the disks. One of these failing is expensive - and getting the middle brick out would require removal of many other bricks, and probably knock out the system quite well....
It isn't really exandable either. For 27 cubes, perhaps the 3x3x3 is the best layout or topology of the blocks, but as you increase the size of the array (100 bricks or something), a cube becomes far more complex, with longer paths between cubes, longer latency, impossibility of removing a central brick. Heat would build up in the centre (yes, they are watercooled, but every part will be making heat, and not all of them connected to the heatpipe and watercooling system).
Maybe some mad buckyball style arrangement would provide the shortest average path between disks (but this would require a lot of statistical work, and depend on how the data was stored, what sort of access was required).
We could end up with huge, weirdly shaped storage arrays, like in films.
The watercooling is a step forwards, working in server rooms is getting far too loud.
Reliability may be an issue - 2.5" disks which it uses are known to be not as reliable as their larger counter parts. And there are a lot of them in this (12x27 = 324 disks), so failure is almost guaranteed within a short time.
I think this may be more of a concept thing than a final product - certainly the lego and modularity aspects need to be re-thought.
Badly written summary and article
on
No More Rebooting?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This is an appalling summary - and the article is no better.
"The technology is highly suitable for broadband Internet connections, Hsu said, noting that it combines the features of low voltage, high speed and low power consumption."
Yes, fantastic. That's great for those broadband internet connections. Faster memory is always good, but choosing this as an application is just a moronic use of buzz words.
"Ignatiev said the new technology is about 1,000 times faster than flash, which is nonmechanical and currently the speediest memory on the market. "
Flash memory is the fastest type of memory on the market? No, it is a form of non-volatile memory, which is very slow by RAM standards.
"is based on resistor logic rather than the traditional transistor logic"
Actually, you'll find that DRAM in most modern computers are capacitative devices - the techniques to make them are the same as MOS transistors, but they do not use switching to store values, IIRC.
Of course there isn't a price tag - what use would selling one of these have in the slightest? You need all the telco side boxes and fibre in first.
Marconi make the equipment, the telco operates it. Until someone adopts this system for fibre in the home, then you won't see prices.
And no, it isn't vaporware, it's called a prototype. If investors and telcos show interest, then production goes ahead. Rolling out something like this is so expensive that you don't just build all the equipment before you know someone will use your system.
This is very impressive. I don't think that your going to have to upgrade your fibre for a while either (assuming it's good SMF then you can get up to several Tb/s on them in the future (ok, that isn't going to happen in the home, but hey)).
It is quite funny though, under one of your photos showing a garden with a huge dark scar running through it, it says "Now, a year later, there aren't any visible tracks of this mayhem." Hmm...
Who does the servicing/tech support? Surely things go wrong now and then? And what uptime do you manage?
500Mbits/s for a spyplane...
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The article says that each Global Hawk requires 500Mbits/s. That is a huge amount of data. Yo think that it must be relaying a lot of recon information (probably at least three cameras, and I should imagine they have radio scanner as well), on top of the data required to fly it in both directions.
They must have some major processing power on board - I should imagine that trying to fly something over a relatively high latency satellite link would be hard otherwise/ But they still have a lot of human intervention - it's probably more guidance than actual flying. I remember seeing an experiment where they introduce a random delay between 0 and 0.5 seconds to what the pilot sees (not feels, as this was in the back of a large jet used for remote flying experiments) and it made control of the aircraft very hard - the pilot overcompensating, and almost unable to land the thing.
There could also be a level of redundancy in the 500Mbits/s - possibly two or more links, because clouds and other conditions can stop them working, and I should imagine that would be a bad thing to happen.
Anyway, I'm off to do some research on these planes... but if anyone else finds anything interesting, why not post it.
PS. Yes, I am glossing over the real issues behind these articles. But hey, it's better than the "What about the treaties" or the serious "US kick ass, no one can touch us posts". Wake up. The world isn't like that anymore. Flying planes into building, killing lots of civilians goes against a lot of international laws and treaties.
Face it - these treaties are to stop developed, civilised, large military forces from wiping out small countries and commiting war crimes. The smaller countries do not give a shit.
Sheer engine size is a really inelegant way of making your car go fast.
Over here, it's virtually unheard of to have cars with engines over 3000cc in size. In fact, 2.5L is seen as big, used in BMWs and Mercs.
One of my friends has a Nissan Micra turbo, which is a 1L engine (slightly less in fact). It is 4WD, has traction control and ABS. Fair enough, on the quarter mile it won't beat all cars, but it does go pretty fast.
Get it on a winding country road, and you are away. This thing handle corners beautifully (seeing as it was a rally car a few years back), brakes quickly (which your 4000lb car can't do), and still does 25mpg.
Your analogy of the cray and overclocked box is flawed. Is it not a far more elegant, beautiful way of getting a car to go faster by perfecting what is contained withing? It's more like people who buy a 2.2Ghz P4 with 1GB of ram for word processing compared to those who buy what they can afford, and push it to the limits.
Your post was deeply American centric as well. Even most sports cars over here don't even approach engine sizes or ridiculous weights you are talking about.
Get in a modded Nissan Skyline, get on a proper road, and then try and beat it in your car. I guarantee you will lose.
This doesn't have much point really, but the kind of noises that piss people off are completely different.
I have two computers on in my room, neither of which are quiet. I can tell which HDs out of the 4 are on, and if any of the CPU fans break. I sleep through this all fine unless some heavy disk access happens, or I hear one of the fans go off. However, if I leave the amp up high, and the speakers hiss even slightly, I can't sleep. My girlfriend also isn't too impressed with the level of noise.
However, at hers, she only has a little laptop. I can't sleep with the high pitch hiss/whine that the HD makes, or the horrible forced air noise the tiny fan makes - and it isn't that I'm not used to it.
Whenever we do crew things for shows, and I need to sleep during the performance so I can work afterwards, I find sleeping behind the speaker stacks is a great place... the treble is cut because it is more directional, but the base stays, and it's quite relaxing. I can even fall asleep in clubs, base is kind of relaxing. It is a different sort of sleep from usual - very hard to wake up, and you get very vivid dreams.
So, you'd think I was fine with noise. But I can't stand working in co-lo facilities. It's not so bad in a cluster room, or somewhere all the computers are the same... but when you have 300 machines each with two fans, HD arrays, loads of raqs, then all the different noises combine, and working in there on anything more complex than running cables is impossible. I was working on a few servers for about 12 hours one day, and had a huge supply of Dr Peppers, so hadn't moved much... when I got up to leave I felt so dizzy, and I think it was a result of the noise. I tripped over a bit of cat 5 and took out a server as well...
A little off topic, but Budweiser (as in beer) are doing a promotion here in the UK to win prizes... but it is the way they do it that is interesting.
Several cans contain a "GPS transmitter" - when you open the can, they find your location, and a team of people turn up at your door within a few hours.
First, this is going to be prone to a few problems, like people moving.
Second, the "GPS transmitter" is probably a gps receiver, and a mobile phone. When it is opened, it calls a number and reports the location of the device.
Surely these things can't be too expensive if they are in a beer can? Simply a gps receiver and a phone would cost in excess of £100 - but they would have to buy phones outright, so even more.
If I got one, I'd probably try getting it somewhere that the signals would not get out of (convenient faraday cage... (car maybe)), and take the thing apart.
DWDM uses multiple wavelengths to transmit data down a single fibre. This system uses 40Gbps channels agregated into one fibre. Generally, the 40Gbps is then split into 10Gbps or 2.5Gbps lines, and then the data is fed to then.
The systems I have seen in development have several devices that produce data streams with differing characterisitics (TCP/IP wrapped in another protocol, ATM, voice, etc.) and then the input is compared to the output. There is no storage bar the almost instantaneous data need to compare (though 16000km of fibre did take a while).
If and when there needed to be storage, it got split up into smalled channels and fed to the 64 way cluster which dealt with the data.
Anyway, you should be on the look out for a 4Tbps system which will be making its appearance soon.
With Steam, all of your authentication information is stored server side.
Surely this is not a good thing? It is in reference to a re-install - initially I thought each copy of Steam would contain some form of authentication with the servers, but if you have just done a complete re-install, Steam will be gone as well as your half-life CD key.
It could be something as simple as a password, but game developers aren't noted for their skills in the security world - simply gaining access to someones "account" could gain you access to every game they own
A game that was released during the era when 286 computers were the norm, obviously. Everyone else worked that out, didn't they?
Back in the time era you are talking about, the '286 machines were the ones that ran the 8088 games too fast.
Clearly you've either forgotten quite a lot or you read about this stuff in your dad's diary.
My first 486 had a turbo button, as did my second one. My mates 386 had one as well. I remember trying to play many games from several years before than went too fast on "Turbo", and needed dropping down to a lower clockrate. Neither of the 486s dropped low enough really, it was still too fast.
And yes, ever since 286s came out, they have run 8088 games too fast. They always will. That wasn't the era I was talking of.
My first motheboard wasn't turbo. It was a plain 4.77 MHz one. I remember how cool it was when I got one that had an 8 MHz setting. Hell, I remember how exciting it was when I got Hercules (compatible) Graphics. Started out with an IBM MDA card like any true IBM-PC hacker.
What's a "motheboard"^H^H^H^H oh, shit, forgot I wasn't a pedantic wanker troll without a user account.
No, it modulates the frequency of the system clocks.
Yes, I was wrong here. It seems that some modulate the clock frequency, and others modulate the duty cycle of the pulses. By about +/- 250kHz it seems (quite a large amount).
Performance is unchanged, and anything that breaks is garbage and should be discarded anyway.
I do dispute this - an unstable clock can have bad effects on a system where timing is critical. Anything that is being pushed to the limits cannot benefit from a unstable clock. Raid cards, gigabit ethernet, things like this do suffer. Things that use PLLs will not enjoy this.
It's also documented that creative cards are sensitive to the PCI bus being out, and when overclocking, are often the first card to drop out. Obviously, it is best to keep the PCI bus close to 33MHz, but certain bus speeds don't allow it to be.
"The flexCD is non-toxic and may be used with food items"
Cool - now instead of getting sent free coasters, I get sent free small plates. Now if only there was a new sort of CD that didn't need the holes in the middle.
Thing is, are rigid CDs toxic - because I use them for toast and stuff sometimes....
Some motherboards have a bios option, "Spread Spectrum", which rounds off the square wave clock pulses, so that noise from sharp changes is lessened, IIRC. It does decrease performance, and stop some cards functioning altogether.
Trust me, in the situation, the police did turn up quite a lot for reasons more friendly than confiscating your hardware (which is probably about the worst thing that can happen to a geek).
One of the big issues here is the things that are on the hard drive rather than the actual physical laptop.
I remember a few years back when me and a few friends were continuously scared of getting a knock on the door from the authorities, we had ideas to develop a device to entirely wipe the hard drive.
Initially, this consisted of a coil of thick guage copper wire around the HD, which was in turn connected across the mains supply. Guaranteed to fuck over the HD big time.
Problem was, that we never had the guts to put one round our main HD, because we knew that whatever mechanism used, it could get accidently turned on.
We also worried about, if the police did turn up, how would we know whether it was a friendly visit or not, then wipe or HDs for no reason.
All because of the anarchists cookbook and about 10 porn pictures.....
Turbo was the normal state (the rated processor speed), and the other setting was slower. This was to allow programs from older computers that used clock cycles as a timing mechanism to work on newer PCs.
Try playing any 286 game on a Athlon or P3 and you will see the problem.
The C3 chips stop it getting so warm, and cope with DVD decoding fine (as well as being cheaper than p3s).
And you can replace the fan with a better, more expensive one, though granted, the small size and airflow cause it to be quite loud whatever. I have seen it removed and one large fan used externally to the case, though it didn't look as nice.
And the audio is up to SB128 noise levels, not that this says much....
Just before the site got completely/.ed , I saw that it said that it could support 2 pci cards, but only one slot? Is this some form of riser card arrangement? Did anyone see it before it stopped working?
C3 doesn't really require that much cooling, and could probably cope with a smallish passive heatsink stuck on with thermal adhesive.
The processor is integrated onto the board anyway, so it most likely does come with a cooling solution, but they took it off for pretty pictures.
Shuttle are bringing out the successors to the sv24 - one for P4s and the other for Athlons. Not sure when they are actually appearing - but it will take them 6 months to appear in the UK anyway:(
This thing has an absoluletely appaling sound card which is fine on PC speakers, but connected to a separates system?
It uses laptop HDs (IIRC). These are very expensive and whine a lot, as well as not being available in 100GB.
It's got a powerful fan and restrictive intakes, resulting in a lot of noise.
Better solution is something like a Shuttle SV24 (flexATX with everything built in, one PCI, any IDE hd, one external 5.25 bay, one external 3.5 bay. And if you want, a via C3 chip, and no need for a fan. Mmm... and a nice aluminium case. Makes a good DVD player as well.
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I feel that the "lego" comparison is a bit flawed - this to me suggests a completly sealed box which stores data, power being inductively coupled, data through RF, etc. Also, lego is designed to be built, taken apart, built again.
This system is meant to have 27 cubes in a 3x3x3 cube, and when part fails, it is supposed to remain in place. Low latencies and high throughput are due to their being interconnected to the surrounding bricks.
First issue here is, that people don't like seeing things fail, and leaving them. This thing contains a "fast x86 processor", a gig of ram, (later on) six port Infiniband switches, plus all the disks. One of these failing is expensive - and getting the middle brick out would require removal of many other bricks, and probably knock out the system quite well....
It isn't really exandable either. For 27 cubes, perhaps the 3x3x3 is the best layout or topology of the blocks, but as you increase the size of the array (100 bricks or something), a cube becomes far more complex, with longer paths between cubes, longer latency, impossibility of removing a central brick. Heat would build up in the centre (yes, they are watercooled, but every part will be making heat, and not all of them connected to the heatpipe and watercooling system).
Maybe some mad buckyball style arrangement would provide the shortest average path between disks (but this would require a lot of statistical work, and depend on how the data was stored, what sort of access was required).
We could end up with huge, weirdly shaped storage arrays, like in films.
The watercooling is a step forwards, working in server rooms is getting far too loud.
Reliability may be an issue - 2.5" disks which it uses are known to be not as reliable as their larger counter parts. And there are a lot of them in this (12x27 = 324 disks), so failure is almost guaranteed within a short time.
I think this may be more of a concept thing than a final product - certainly the lego and modularity aspects need to be re-thought.
This is an appalling summary - and the article is no better.
"The technology is highly suitable for broadband Internet connections, Hsu said, noting that it combines the features of low voltage, high speed and low power consumption."
Yes, fantastic. That's great for those broadband internet connections. Faster memory is always good, but choosing this as an application is just a moronic use of buzz words.
"Ignatiev said the new technology is about 1,000 times faster than flash, which is nonmechanical and currently the speediest memory on the market. "
Flash memory is the fastest type of memory on the market? No, it is a form of non-volatile memory, which is very slow by RAM standards.
"is based on resistor logic rather than the traditional transistor logic"
Actually, you'll find that DRAM in most modern computers are capacitative devices - the techniques to make them are the same as MOS transistors, but they do not use switching to store values, IIRC.
I wish people would not spout such rubbish.
Of course there isn't a price tag - what use would selling one of these have in the slightest? You need all the telco side boxes and fibre in first.
Marconi make the equipment, the telco operates it. Until someone adopts this system for fibre in the home, then you won't see prices.
And no, it isn't vaporware, it's called a prototype. If investors and telcos show interest, then production goes ahead. Rolling out something like this is so expensive that you don't just build all the equipment before you know someone will use your system.
This is very impressive. I don't think that your going to have to upgrade your fibre for a while either (assuming it's good SMF then you can get up to several Tb/s on them in the future (ok, that isn't going to happen in the home, but hey)). It is quite funny though, under one of your photos showing a garden with a huge dark scar running through it, it says "Now, a year later, there aren't any visible tracks of this mayhem." Hmm... Who does the servicing/tech support? Surely things go wrong now and then? And what uptime do you manage?
The article says that each Global Hawk requires 500Mbits/s. That is a huge amount of data. Yo think that it must be relaying a lot of recon information (probably at least three cameras, and I should imagine they have radio scanner as well), on top of the data required to fly it in both directions.
They must have some major processing power on board - I should imagine that trying to fly something over a relatively high latency satellite link would be hard otherwise/ But they still have a lot of human intervention - it's probably more guidance than actual flying. I remember seeing an experiment where they introduce a random delay between 0 and 0.5 seconds to what the pilot sees (not feels, as this was in the back of a large jet used for remote flying experiments) and it made control of the aircraft very hard - the pilot overcompensating, and almost unable to land the thing.
There could also be a level of redundancy in the 500Mbits/s - possibly two or more links, because clouds and other conditions can stop them working, and I should imagine that would be a bad thing to happen.
Anyway, I'm off to do some research on these planes... but if anyone else finds anything interesting, why not post it.
PS. Yes, I am glossing over the real issues behind these articles. But hey, it's better than the "What about the treaties" or the serious "US kick ass, no one can touch us posts". Wake up. The world isn't like that anymore. Flying planes into building, killing lots of civilians goes against a lot of international laws and treaties.
Face it - these treaties are to stop developed, civilised, large military forces from wiping out small countries and commiting war crimes. The smaller countries do not give a shit.
Like the US listen anyway:http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/r ec.bush.abm/
Do any of them?
It says 15kg clearly in the article which is only a few paragraphs long and takes less than a minute to read.
Maybe you should try that.
Sheer engine size is a really inelegant way of making your car go fast. Over here, it's virtually unheard of to have cars with engines over 3000cc in size. In fact, 2.5L is seen as big, used in BMWs and Mercs. One of my friends has a Nissan Micra turbo, which is a 1L engine (slightly less in fact). It is 4WD, has traction control and ABS. Fair enough, on the quarter mile it won't beat all cars, but it does go pretty fast. Get it on a winding country road, and you are away. This thing handle corners beautifully (seeing as it was a rally car a few years back), brakes quickly (which your 4000lb car can't do), and still does 25mpg. Your analogy of the cray and overclocked box is flawed. Is it not a far more elegant, beautiful way of getting a car to go faster by perfecting what is contained withing? It's more like people who buy a 2.2Ghz P4 with 1GB of ram for word processing compared to those who buy what they can afford, and push it to the limits. Your post was deeply American centric as well. Even most sports cars over here don't even approach engine sizes or ridiculous weights you are talking about. Get in a modded Nissan Skyline, get on a proper road, and then try and beat it in your car. I guarantee you will lose.
This doesn't have much point really, but the kind of noises that piss people off are completely different.
I have two computers on in my room, neither of which are quiet. I can tell which HDs out of the 4 are on, and if any of the CPU fans break. I sleep through this all fine unless some heavy disk access happens, or I hear one of the fans go off. However, if I leave the amp up high, and the speakers hiss even slightly, I can't sleep. My girlfriend also isn't too impressed with the level of noise.
However, at hers, she only has a little laptop. I can't sleep with the high pitch hiss/whine that the HD makes, or the horrible forced air noise the tiny fan makes - and it isn't that I'm not used to it.
Whenever we do crew things for shows, and I need to sleep during the performance so I can work afterwards, I find sleeping behind the speaker stacks is a great place... the treble is cut because it is more directional, but the base stays, and it's quite relaxing. I can even fall asleep in clubs, base is kind of relaxing. It is a different sort of sleep from usual - very hard to wake up, and you get very vivid dreams.
So, you'd think I was fine with noise. But I can't stand working in co-lo facilities. It's not so bad in a cluster room, or somewhere all the computers are the same... but when you have 300 machines each with two fans, HD arrays, loads of raqs, then all the different noises combine, and working in there on anything more complex than running cables is impossible. I was working on a few servers for about 12 hours one day, and had a huge supply of Dr Peppers, so hadn't moved much... when I got up to leave I felt so dizzy, and I think it was a result of the noise. I tripped over a bit of cat 5 and took out a server as well...
A little off topic, but Budweiser (as in beer) are doing a promotion here in the UK to win prizes... but it is the way they do it that is interesting.
Several cans contain a "GPS transmitter" - when you open the can, they find your location, and a team of people turn up at your door within a few hours.
First, this is going to be prone to a few problems, like people moving.
Second, the "GPS transmitter" is probably a gps receiver, and a mobile phone. When it is opened, it calls a number and reports the location of the device.
Surely these things can't be too expensive if they are in a beer can? Simply a gps receiver and a phone would cost in excess of £100 - but they would have to buy phones outright, so even more.
If I got one, I'd probably try getting it somewhere that the signals would not get out of (convenient faraday cage... (car maybe)), and take the thing apart.
DWDM uses multiple wavelengths to transmit data down a single fibre. This system uses 40Gbps channels agregated into one fibre. Generally, the 40Gbps is then split into 10Gbps or 2.5Gbps lines, and then the data is fed to then.
The systems I have seen in development have several devices that produce data streams with differing characterisitics (TCP/IP wrapped in another protocol, ATM, voice, etc.) and then the input is compared to the output. There is no storage bar the almost instantaneous data need to compare (though 16000km of fibre did take a while).
If and when there needed to be storage, it got split up into smalled channels and fed to the 64 way cluster which dealt with the data.
Anyway, you should be on the look out for a 4Tbps system which will be making its appearance soon.
With Steam, all of your authentication information is stored server side.
Surely this is not a good thing? It is in reference to a re-install - initially I thought each copy of Steam would contain some form of authentication with the servers, but if you have just done a complete re-install, Steam will be gone as well as your half-life CD key.
It could be something as simple as a password, but game developers aren't noted for their skills in the security world - simply gaining access to someones "account" could gain you access to every game they own
Of course, that is what Kazaa et. al are for
What the hell is a '286 game?
A game that was released during the era when 286 computers were the norm, obviously. Everyone else worked that out, didn't they?
Back in the time era you are talking about, the '286 machines were the ones that ran the 8088 games too fast.
Clearly you've either forgotten quite a lot or you read about this stuff in your dad's diary.
My first 486 had a turbo button, as did my second one. My mates 386 had one as well. I remember trying to play many games from several years before than went too fast on "Turbo", and needed dropping down to a lower clockrate. Neither of the 486s dropped low enough really, it was still too fast.
And yes, ever since 286s came out, they have run 8088 games too fast. They always will. That wasn't the era I was talking of.
My first motheboard wasn't turbo. It was a plain 4.77 MHz one. I remember how cool it was when I got one that had an 8 MHz setting. Hell, I remember how exciting it was when I got Hercules (compatible) Graphics. Started out with an IBM MDA card like any true IBM-PC hacker.
What's a "motheboard"^H^H^H^H oh, shit, forgot I wasn't a pedantic wanker troll without a user account.
No, it modulates the frequency of the system clocks.
Yes, I was wrong here. It seems that some modulate the clock frequency, and others modulate the duty cycle of the pulses. By about +/- 250kHz it seems (quite a large amount).
Performance is unchanged, and anything that breaks is garbage and should be discarded anyway.
I do dispute this - an unstable clock can have bad effects on a system where timing is critical. Anything that is being pushed to the limits cannot benefit from a unstable clock. Raid cards, gigabit ethernet, things like this do suffer. Things that use PLLs will not enjoy this.
It's also documented that creative cards are sensitive to the PCI bus being out, and when overclocking, are often the first card to drop out. Obviously, it is best to keep the PCI bus close to 33MHz, but certain bus speeds don't allow it to be.
"The flexCD is non-toxic and may be used with food items"
Cool - now instead of getting sent free coasters, I get sent free small plates. Now if only there was a new sort of CD that didn't need the holes in the middle.
Thing is, are rigid CDs toxic - because I use them for toast and stuff sometimes....
Some motherboards have a bios option, "Spread Spectrum", which rounds off the square wave clock pulses, so that noise from sharp changes is lessened, IIRC. It does decrease performance, and stop some cards functioning altogether.
Trust me, in the situation, the police did turn up quite a lot for reasons more friendly than confiscating your hardware (which is probably about the worst thing that can happen to a geek).
I found using wine made a good job of slowing things down enough :)
One of the big issues here is the things that are on the hard drive rather than the actual physical laptop.
I remember a few years back when me and a few friends were continuously scared of getting a knock on the door from the authorities, we had ideas to develop a device to entirely wipe the hard drive.
Initially, this consisted of a coil of thick guage copper wire around the HD, which was in turn connected across the mains supply. Guaranteed to fuck over the HD big time.
Problem was, that we never had the guts to put one round our main HD, because we knew that whatever mechanism used, it could get accidently turned on.
We also worried about, if the police did turn up, how would we know whether it was a friendly visit or not, then wipe or HDs for no reason.
All because of the anarchists cookbook and about 10 porn pictures.....
Turbo was the normal state (the rated processor speed), and the other setting was slower. This was to allow programs from older computers that used clock cycles as a timing mechanism to work on newer PCs.
Try playing any 286 game on a Athlon or P3 and you will see the problem.
The C3 chips stop it getting so warm, and cope with DVD decoding fine (as well as being cheaper than p3s).
And you can replace the fan with a better, more expensive one, though granted, the small size and airflow cause it to be quite loud whatever. I have seen it removed and one large fan used externally to the case, though it didn't look as nice.
And the audio is up to SB128 noise levels, not that this says much....
Just before the site got completely /.ed , I saw that it said that it could support 2 pci cards, but only one slot? Is this some form of riser card arrangement? Did anyone see it before it stopped working?
C3 doesn't really require that much cooling, and could probably cope with a smallish passive heatsink stuck on with thermal adhesive. The processor is integrated onto the board anyway, so it most likely does come with a cooling solution, but they took it off for pretty pictures.
Shuttle are bringing out the successors to the sv24 - one for P4s and the other for Athlons. Not sure when they are actually appearing - but it will take them 6 months to appear in the UK anyway :(
Problems are:
This thing has an absoluletely appaling sound card which is fine on PC speakers, but connected to a separates system?
It uses laptop HDs (IIRC). These are very expensive and whine a lot, as well as not being available in 100GB.
It's got a powerful fan and restrictive intakes, resulting in a lot of noise.
Better solution is something like a Shuttle SV24 (flexATX with everything built in, one PCI, any IDE hd, one external 5.25 bay, one external 3.5 bay. And if you want, a via C3 chip, and no need for a fan. Mmm... and a nice aluminium case. Makes a good DVD player as well.
Or any of the small form factor boards...