[KLUG Members] Win2k+linux and some questions on Hard drives

[Bryan-TheBS-Smith]

Sanjay Chigurupati wrote:
> I have a couple of questions. I have win 98 and rh 7.0
> on my computer. I am thinking of adding another hard
> drive and installing win 2000 on the second hard
> drive. Is this feasible? any possible conflicts?

All Microsoft operating systems must either be located on the first
drive, or first boot from it.  Win2K's NTLDR bootstrap can accomodate
dual-booting by pre-empting Windows 98's IO.SYS bootstrap.  I.e., Win2K
actually boots first in your C: drive, then lets you select between NT
(4.0, 2K, XP) and DOS (95, 98, ME) OSes.

Linux's LILO/GRUB can still control the MBR (master boot record) of the
hard drive, and you would get it first.

> my mboard supports ata 66 but not ata 100.If I put a
> ata 100 drive on my computer will it work? I cant seem
> to find any seagate ata 66 drives. never had problems
> with seagate. which are other reliable disk drives?

100MBps = UltraDMA mode 5, 66MBps = UltraDMA mode 4 (which includes
50MBps, mode 3), 33MBps = UltraDMA mode 2 (which includes 22MBps, mode 1
and 16MBps, mode 0).  Some drives have a nasty habit of "switching live"
into a faster mode that is not supported by the disk controller.  This
is less of an issue in more recent drives, but was a serious pain in the
@$$ when ATA66 first came out.

Under Linux, you can _force_ UltraDMA mode 4 mode down the drives throat
with "hdparm -X68" (that's 64 for "Ultra" + 4 for "mode 4").  I know no
equivalent under Windows.

Hence why most drive vendors have released utilities to limit the
drive's firmware to a maximum speed.  I have used this utility to tame
ATA66/100 Maxtor drives on ATA33/66 under Windows.

> whats difference between athlon and athlon thunderbird?

There are several revisions of the Athlon.  Some have marketing names,
like "Duron," "Thunderbird," "XP" and "MP", others don't.  

The "Athlon-C" core is the typical "Duron" (128KB L1, 64KB L2 cache) and
upto 1.4GHz "Thunderbird" (128KB L1, 256KB L2 cache) you'll find.  Most
people who have Athlons have this chip.  It's no slouch, although
programs that support only Intel SSE/SSE2 but not AMD 3DNow! will
usually run faster on Intel.

The newer "Athlon 4" core is what you'll get in both the original "MP"
and newer "MP" and "XP" "rated" versions (e.g., MP 1900+, XP 1900+) that
use a slower clock than their "rating".  The "Athlon 4" core itself
features many improvements, including "better than Intel" SSE/SSE2
performance -- let alone _accuracy_ because Intel's P3/P4 SSE/SSE2
implemenation does "lossy math"! (i.e. interpreted 32/64-bit integer,
quite noticable encoding MPEG-4/DivX with SSE on Intel P4 v. an
Athlon-4) -- whereas AMD leverages the power (and precission) of its
3-issue FPU (floating point unit) for all SIMD operations.

[ NOTE:  I used to work with a few Intel engineers who regularly bashed
their own MMX/SSE "marketing" strategy. ]

Note the Athlon 4 "ratings" are actually _lower_ versus a Pentium 4 than
they really are.  AMD was comparing their performance to the prototypes
of Intel's newer Pentium 4s that were supposed to be released in 2001Q4,
but Intel has delayed (again).  An Athlon XP1800+ can outclass any Intel
CPU (even 2.2GHz "high-end"  Xeon prototypes) at most a2D/3D
applications -- especially video programs that utilize SSE/SSE2
(assuming they don't just assume the Athlon doesn't support them,
instead of actually testing for SSE/SSE2, like older versions of
Microsoft's Media Player assumes).

> could I put a tbird on my k7v mboard?

_Any_ Socket-"A"/462-pin Athlon will work in _any_ Socket-"A"/462 Athlon
mainboard.  The only "issues" you could run into are the following:

  1.  A few, early Socket-"A" mainboards lacked adequate voltage
regulators that could handle the current.  This resulted in voltage
drops that introduced instability.

  2.  If you put a 266MHz FSB Athlon in a 200MHz FSB-only capable
mainboard, you'll run at 200/266 = 3/4ths speed.  E.g., if you
accidently buy a 1.4G/266MHz Athlon instead of a 1.4G/200MHz Athlon, and
put it in a 200MHz FSB-only mainboard, it will only run at
200/266*1.4GHz = 1.066GHz.

  3.  Some mainboards won't report the correct speed, but the CPUs *ARE*
multiplier locked and actually *DO* run at their true speed regardless
of what the BIOS says (unless you have the FSB issue in #2).

Interesting note:  You can put different CPU speed (but same FSB speed),
non-MP Athlons in an Athlon MP mainboard and they'll work.  The Athlon
bus is *NOT* SMP like Intel, but uses the Digital Alpha EV6 bus (long
story).

-- TheBS

-- 
Bryan "TheBS" Smith    mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org   chat:thebs413
Engineer  AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.  http://www.linux-wlan.org
President     SmithConcepts, Inc.   http://www.SmithConcepts.com
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