R
Rich Grise
Guest
There was a thread not too long ago about computer memory; I
haven't bothered to try to dig it up; it was just a long
rambling discussion about error detection and stuff.
Well, this is a long ramble - maybe I should have signed
it as "The Plainclothes Hippie", as I'm quite euphoriated,
herbically, of course. A little alcohol can be quite
synergistic with the herb, of course.
But that notwithstanding, I have an [possibly] interesting
phenomenon to report here about computer memory. I have a
pentium of some kind - oh, dangit! There's Rich The Pedant...
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 4
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 996.479
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsrsyscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 1985.74
-----------
Oh, OK, it's an Athlon! Kewl!
Anyways, I was having no end of problems with Windoze - I've
got my firewall configured so that the Windoze (W2K, actually)
box can't even communicate with the internet - only the Samba
server.
And I kept thinking, "What's getting through, breaking my
system?"
And the one really, really annoying thing was that MDT6
(AutoCAD Mechanical Desktop, version 6 [la-dih-dah]) kept
breaking. I'd have to reinstall, and it'd be good for one
run. Then break.
But, I had set that aside for when I want to bother to take
notes and go seek out answers and all that crap - what I
have is "good enough" for now.
So, given that.
I was sitting musing about this memory stuff, and I remembered
that I have a couple of memory sticks on my shelf - long
story short, one of them is the same edge connector (3 bays -
short, medium, long) as the one that's in this computer, so
why am I not using it?
So I pull out the 256M stick, and plug in this other stick,
boot up to Linux, and free reports about 56 MB of memory. Oh!
Suddenly I remember why I had left it on the shelf. But, WTF,
I think to myself - why not, now that that one's working, just
slap in the other one and see what happens?
So I did. It booted, free in Linux reported >310MB (don't
remember the exact ... goddammit!
$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 312844 189672 123172 0 8780 33340
-/+ buffers/cache: 147552 165292
Swap: 1493960 236600 1257360
richgrise@thunderbird:~
$
-----------------
OK, 312844. How much more than 262,144 is that? I'm too lazy.
But, I haven't noticed any performance diffences in Linux, but
over in Doze-land, MDT6 hasn't died on startup since I installed
the new 56M or whatever it is. 48M? 49152? Whatever.
I accidentally fixed something that I didn't even know that
that was what would fix it.
Hope I don't dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the
back. ;-D
Cheers!
Rich
haven't bothered to try to dig it up; it was just a long
rambling discussion about error detection and stuff.
Well, this is a long ramble - maybe I should have signed
it as "The Plainclothes Hippie", as I'm quite euphoriated,
herbically, of course. A little alcohol can be quite
synergistic with the herb, of course.
But that notwithstanding, I have an [possibly] interesting
phenomenon to report here about computer memory. I have a
pentium of some kind - oh, dangit! There's Rich The Pedant...
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 4
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 996.479
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsrsyscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 1985.74
-----------
Oh, OK, it's an Athlon! Kewl!
Anyways, I was having no end of problems with Windoze - I've
got my firewall configured so that the Windoze (W2K, actually)
box can't even communicate with the internet - only the Samba
server.
And I kept thinking, "What's getting through, breaking my
system?"
And the one really, really annoying thing was that MDT6
(AutoCAD Mechanical Desktop, version 6 [la-dih-dah]) kept
breaking. I'd have to reinstall, and it'd be good for one
run. Then break.
But, I had set that aside for when I want to bother to take
notes and go seek out answers and all that crap - what I
have is "good enough" for now.
So, given that.
I was sitting musing about this memory stuff, and I remembered
that I have a couple of memory sticks on my shelf - long
story short, one of them is the same edge connector (3 bays -
short, medium, long) as the one that's in this computer, so
why am I not using it?
So I pull out the 256M stick, and plug in this other stick,
boot up to Linux, and free reports about 56 MB of memory. Oh!
Suddenly I remember why I had left it on the shelf. But, WTF,
I think to myself - why not, now that that one's working, just
slap in the other one and see what happens?
So I did. It booted, free in Linux reported >310MB (don't
remember the exact ... goddammit!
$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 312844 189672 123172 0 8780 33340
-/+ buffers/cache: 147552 165292
Swap: 1493960 236600 1257360
richgrise@thunderbird:~
$
-----------------
OK, 312844. How much more than 262,144 is that? I'm too lazy.
But, I haven't noticed any performance diffences in Linux, but
over in Doze-land, MDT6 hasn't died on startup since I installed
the new 56M or whatever it is. 48M? 49152? Whatever.
I accidentally fixed something that I didn't even know that
that was what would fix it.
Hope I don't dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the
back. ;-D
Cheers!
Rich