> And so I have an idea: would it be possible and feasible to build the
> main memory from SRAM? I would expect this to give a bigger improvement
> than most of the processor advances that are on the horizon, including
> the Pentium III, and only 8 or 12 MB per system should be needed. Can
> anyone comment on how much this would help, what it would cost, and
> whether it is possible with existing motherboards?
I doubt that what you propose is possible with off the shelf
components. Chipsets are designed to accommodate certain types of
memory, and I don't believe that current chipsets support SRAM as main
memory. If a chipset does not support the type of memory you put into
the machine, then it will not work. Supposing that you can get SRAM in
DIMM or SIMM form, it would not work in any off the shelf motherboard.
Sure, SRAM in the form of cache memory works, but a variation of DRAM
whether it be SDRAM or EDO DRAM, all main memory is still DRAM. If
you could use SRAM as main memory, I'm sure that server manufacturers
would offer it standard or at least an option. Hell I would buy it!
Single Floppy LL Tester?
========================
What would be good to have is an all in one magic Prime95 bootable
floppy disk. I would find it incredibly useful to have a bootable
disk that runs LL tests w/o an Windows operation system on the hard
disk of the machine. Currently I have >40 new PII 400's in the box
to be distributed in various departments here at work. If I could
open them up out of the box, give them power without keyboard, mouse,
monitor, or network and let them run Prime95 off of a bootable disk
that would be great! Many of these machines have been sitting for a
month already, and may sit for another month or two longer. If I
could use these completely idle CPUs I could get perhaps 160 LL
tests done that would not be done otherwise. I would also "burn-in"
these machines at the same time. If anyone out there has a
configuration like this already, please let me know!
What I propose is to do one of the following:
Method One
----------
1. Make a bootable disk using MS-DOS or MS-Windows95's DOS, the end
user must provide this for software licensing reasons, GIMPS can't
go around giving out MS software. Win95 B or Win98 bootable would
be preferred so FAT32 partitions can be "seen".
2. Have a program not unlike Prime95, but runs under a DOS that runs
LL tests. I have been thinking about this for the past few hours, and
have come to the realization that a TCP/IP stack would be too awkward
and cumbersome, so this would be limited to manual testing.
3. Being that rather large temporary files are created, often greater
then a floppy disk, they can be temporarily redirected to the hard
drive of the computer.
Method Two
----------
Use a linux bootable disk with mprime on it set to automatically
load on boot, again only manual testing, with temporary files
redirected to the hard drive of the computer. The linux kernel
would have to be both FAT32 aware, because most new machines
ship with FAT32 formatted hard drives now. Hell, if you are really
good network support could also be built into this disk!
I am not a linux guru by any means, but I'm pretty sure this is
possible, and can then be freely distributed as a disk image.
Any ideas people?
Marc Getty - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ: 12916278
http://www.getty.net - http://www.vwthing.org Work: 215-204-3291
http://etc.temple.edu/ Home: 215-322-8363
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