On Mon, 29 May 2000, Brook humphrey wrote:
> Sorry to let you down but the most of the cyrix processors have had
> stability problems. I see this problem allot in my computer store. The
> problem is most likely not with the kernel but your processor.
BTW, there is a utility names "set6x86" or something, that allows changing
the internal flags of the Cyrix processor to enable/disable some subtle
settings.
The most interesting setting for the general user is the one that enables
a low power consumption mode when the processor is idle. The power
dissipated in the proc drops from something about 15-20 watts to 0.1 watts
or so. This greatly reduces the temperature of the proc and keeps it more
stable. (You can even *hear* the difference because it causes a slight
difference in the fan speed, due to difference in power consumption, see
set6x86 documentation for details).
One of my computers is P166+-based, which I let actually run at 120MHz
(2*60) like a P150+ because it seemed to hang often when I ran it at
2*66.6 as it should.
I think it may be interesting to include this tool in future
distributions, and a add a line into the installation process like
grep -i cyrix < /proc/cpuinfo && select_package_for_install 'set6x86...'
(or its perl equivalent).
There is already a rpm for set6x86, there are things that make it
unsuitable for direct inclusion into the distrib:
-no startup script to call at boot time from /etc/rc.d/init.d/
-tool simply assumes the proc is a Cyrix and happily sets the registers
(didn't make any harm to my AMD-K6, but detection is so simple to add)
(I might even do that and offer you a ready-to-include .src.rpm, but I
fear I lack time. If you ask...)
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St�phane Gourichon - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 - �quipe AnimatLab
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