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Posts in Hardware
Using the ultimate boot disk to test hardware
I have been using the Ultime Boot Disk for the past few months to test x86 and X64 hardware. The disk contains numerous awesome utilities that can be used to test memory, disks and CPUs. The following packages come on the CD, and are four of my personal favorites: Memtest86+ to test memory Darik's Boot and Nuke to securely erase data from a disk drive CPU burn to test CPUs PCI sniffer to identify the type of card in a system
$ read more →DMA modes
If you are curious what the various UltraDMA modes mean, and the speeds they operate at, you might be interested in the bugclub UltraDMA tutorial.
$ read more →AMD Opteron overview
If you are interested in learning why the AMD Opteron processor is currently the top dog in the X64 server space, you might be interested in the following Anandtech article: The article discusses the K8 architecture in depth, and explains why hyper transport rocks. I have been wanting to upgrade my Sun Ultra 10s to more modern hardware, and I think an AMD solution would be a good fit (especially since Solaris FMA now supports AMD CPUs!).
$ read more →Cool write up on AMD Opteron frequency scaling and TSC drift
This is a nifty write up on AMD Opteron frequency scaling and the issues associated with TSC drift:
$ read more →Most common cause of memory failures
While reading through some Fujitsu documentation I came across the following: "Soft errors were formerly caused by alpha particles in the IC housing. This can now be precluded for the most part by an improved IC housing. Radioactive gamma radiation from solar eruptions is now the main cause of soft errors. In all probability, pure soft errors do not lead to uncorrectable multi-bit errors in a memory chip…
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