It should be noted that I have since sold most of my Atom based systems (there may be one or two collecting dust, but nothing in service). They were too slow to be really useful. The screens on the netbooks were too small and limited for my liking.
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Gustin Johnson <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 7:54 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I have set up multi-boot and virtual machines before and I'm looking to do >> this again. I'm most interested in minimal hardware... as in can this be >> done from a low end netbook like say an ASUS eeePC. > > Possibly, though I am not a fan of the Atom processors. >> >> >> There is some choice with regard to processors and I see the atom porcessors >> seem to not support the virtualized instructions Intel offers on some more >> expensive and faster and obvioulsy more capable CPUs. >> > Correct. You could install VMWare ESXi 3.5 on this. >> >> Can we still successfully run a virtual machine - say with VMWare or Virtual >> Box or perhaps something OSS? If we can what do we lose? >> >> > I have not tried to do this on hardware that did not have the > virtualization support. ESXi 3.5 is the only exception to this, but > it takes over the whole machine, meaning that you would not be able to > use it as a workstation as well. > >> What do we gain with a more capable CPU? > > A lot. The Atom sucks. It is not energy efficient enough due to the > crappy chipset it is paired to be worth the performance hit. A ULV > Core2 is a better bet. > > Also, while the Atoms are 64 bit capable, they have been throttled to > only support 2 GiB of RAM. So if you want more than 2 GiB of RAM you > need to use a different CPU. > > You can also get a more capable chipset, the Atom is currently paired > with a crappy chipset that draws more energy than the Atom CPU itself. > If you were looking for a small form factor but capable machine you > can get a P55 based Core i5/i7 quad core CPU in a mini-itx form > factor. uATX is pretty much the standard for P55s.> >> >> last time I did this was in the last century and on a 233 mHz pentium (I or >> II - I dont recall) I was able to run Linux w/ Oracle and and NT in a VM. >> It worked fine. >> > Not really an Apples to Apples comparison. > >> Now I see something like an Atom 1.6 GHz should run about as fast as a 2+ >> GHs Pentium 4 so I would think even such a low power system should be a >> candidate for a very decent testbed... I'm not looking for gaming... but I >> probably will want compilers. >> > Nope, the architecture of the Atom is very simple, so you can't really > compare it to a P4. IMO you are better off with an 800 Mhz PIII than > a 1.6 Ghz Atom. > >> >> I'm also interested in OSX and I see apparently the ASUS 900 series is >> pretty compatible... but I know next to nothing about this. >> > Apple keeps screwing with their updates to break compatibility with > non-apple hardware. I would not use any modern OS if I was not > confidant in it's ability to keep up to date. Despite what Apple > zealots say, they need regular security patching as well. > > I can't see a good reason to use OSX unless it came with the hardware. >> >> OS's I want to run include NT, possibly newer winders but not necessarily. >> I'm not a winders fan anyways. > > Again, with no updates to NT I would stay away. > > OSX and maybe even an old DOS machine so I can run some old software > and not bother with a port! The old software includes a serial I/F > for a calcomp plotter. It would be nice to use it again. Of course I > can port this > > Dosbox. Runs on Linux and Windows. Emulates a DOS computer. Pretty > awesome actually (it is how I play Master of Orion I and II on modern > OSs). > >> to Linux if I really want. But that old Calcomp code is about as ugly as it >> gets! >> > _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
