Text 6593, 94 rader
Skriven 2006-07-17 22:08:02 av James Bradley (1:134/77.0)
   Kommentar till text 6575 av Maurice Kinal (1:261/38.9)
Ärende: Newbie
==============
On or about: 07-13-06  15:42, Maurice Kinal did engage James Bradley regarding,
but not
limited to: Newbie

 JB> Compaq distributes their BIOS programs on boot floppies run by DOS.
 JB> ...suspect their "F10" HD partition would do likewise.

 MK> For scsi?  That is usually a rom chip so nothing to do with floppies.

Who said anything about scsi? <G> This Compaq uses two (E?)IDE channels, with
an onboard
SCSI controller. I have no idea if it has a bootable BIOS, or what the
capabilities are. I might
tack Slack onto an added SCSI drive, but I've so many more capable machines in
the stable...
 
 JB> EVERYTHING stacks up on IRQ 11, until an SMP OS wakes up the second 

 MK> I think that is wrong.  Do you have the bios floppies for that
 MK> machine?  I am  guessing there is something in there or perhaps a
 MK> jumper on  the motherboard to turn on/off the second cpu.  Also there 
 MK> may be a missing VRM for the second cpu.  Have you tried 
 MK> booting with just one cpu?

Hmm... I did just write over W98, which only supports 1 CPU. I did have Slack
running, with a
dualie, and a mono kernel on the same. As I suspected, its POST occurs, and if
it doesn't see a
boot floppy, or the "F10 key-press" accessible partition, it starts with the
IDE(/SCSI). About MS,
I think W-NT or better, and maybe XP Pro will support SMP. The installation of
the HD
partition, is run from the DOS-boot floppies, giving me that impression that
its setup will always
run with 1 CPU, but I've yet to walk down that road.

 MK> Does it see and use both cpu's?

AFAIK, yes. I see the upper IRQs, and check-up type executable tells me its in
the mix. Even the
resource monitor gives me two CPU line graphs.
 
 JB> slated for my #1 "PowerEdge" Slackware system.

 MK> That'll work.

Decisions... Decisions... Life is so rough, dealing with five Y.O. gear. <L>
It's the one missing a
second CPU, and I need some sort of a power soak <?> as well as another brain.

 MK> Never had or played with a Dell server.

Seems to be like a Compaq server, with cleaver catches instead of four sizes of
Torx screws to
get under the hood. Before this load, I never *knew* Dell made anything but
el-cheapo stuff. I'm
just waiting for the sticker shock, when I check for the caches' molex plug,
and "CPU power
module".

 JB> an AGP add-on, so I don't think there is any room to tweak how much 
 JB> system memory they get, no?

 MK> Usually that is done in the bios but most half decent agp cards don't
 MK> need or  use that so I turn it off in the bios and let the card 
 MK> itself take care of it's needs.  AGP seems to be going the 
 MK> route of ISA though.

As long as it lasts longer than VLB...
 
 JB> mail machine pronto.

 MK> Understood.  The whole email situation seems pretty screwed up lately.

It's pretty weird, dealing with DOS internal commands again. I always reach for
a "Kill" and
"Yank" keyboard shortcut.

 MK> I am pleasently surprised with this idea so far as I 
 MK> originally suspected it would be far more hassel then it 
 MK> turned out to be.  Certain chipsets are an issue but so far 
 MK> I have been successful ignoring them.

"Give 'em hell, Harry!" <L> 

It's no wonder that become a catch phrase. I laugh every time I repeat it.


... James

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