5/2     How do I get the L1/L2 cache size and cache line size on my machine?
        Can I find this stuff out at compile time somehow?
        \_ You aren't planning on running your code on any other processors?
        \_ May I ask what it is you want to achieve ultimately? If you don't
           know your architecture and want to find out dynamically, there are
           tools that can peek/poke to give you definitive answers, plus you get
	...

7/24    http://csua.org/u/gin (amd.com)
        AMD releases new price list, effective today
        FYI, Conroe is launching Thursday, but it's unclear when inventory
        can satisfy demand, especially for the E6600 "sweet spot".
        \_ I want the E6600, bitch, hands off!  It's the nerd equivalent of
           "tickle-me-Elmo"
	...

2/28    So this new Intel Mac Mini... didn't the old one have better
        graphics and also cost less?
        \_ I think Apple is overcharging for it, since the new model is $100
           more from the last base priced model.  As components go down in
           price, so should the unit, or the specs should go up with a flat
           price.  However, keep in mind you do get 256MB more ram ($75),
	...

3/15    It's been a while since I bought a notebook. Is there any reason to
        pay extra $100 to upgrade from XP Home to XP Professional? How about
        Intel Pentium M Processor 7x5, do they run at decent speed relative
        to say, P4? And what's the difference between 1) Crystal View XGA TFT
        and 2) SXGA+ non-crystal view TFT? ok thx
        \_ You definitely want a Pentium M for the power savings.
	...

3/20    Of all the dot coms and mega corporations, which one do you want
        the most with a massive layoff?
        M$:     ..
        Oracle: ...
        Intel:  .
        Cisco:  ..
	...

4/22  Ultra 10 440Mhz UltraSparc-IIi, 256MB DRAM, 2MB L2 Cache, 9GB disk,
        floppy,cdrom,Creator3D Graphics,keybd/mouse/etc. for $3200 brand new
        from Sun. Thinking of buying one, for personal use. What do you think?
      \_  I'm so pleased that you asked.  This machine gets 18.1 SPECint95,
          22.7 SPECfp95.  For $3500, you could get a dual
          Pentium-III/750E, which gets something like 36 SPECint95 per CPU,
	...

11/19   Anyone have a link to a description of where the cache is on the
        celeron vs. where it is on the pentium ][? A friend of mine is
        trying to argue that the celeron's is not on the CPU, but is for the
        pentium. That's just wrong, but I want definitive proof to fuck him up.
        \_ I believe in early editions of the celeron, your friend is right.
                However, in later editions of the celeron, they added a
	...

9/7     As a general rule, do mobile celerons outperform mobile pentium 2s?
        \_ I wouldn't think so, since the general appeal of celerons seems
           to be their ability to take massive overclocking, and in a
           laptop you probably won't be able to fit the requisite cooling.
        \_ mobile celery has 128k L2 on die, mobile p2 has 256k L2 on die,
           and are pretty much the same else where, which do u think is
	...

8/19    Is it possible to disrupt GPS signal? Can Russians/Chinese send
        a satellite that sends false signal?
        \-well i guess i am now the gps "expert". well, yes, of course
        the system/signal can be disrupted. whether it can be spoofed
        is a trickier question ... because that is a detection-evasion
        issue. the answer depends on what scenario you are looking at.
	...

7/4     Does anyone know how processor-intensive MP3 decoding generally is?
        My Celeron 300 is claiming to consume only 0.1% of the CPU according
        to top but my PentiumMMX 150 could barely keep up.
        \_ this doesn't answer the question, but I bet FPU, MMX, OS, and
           player all could have contributed to your results
           \_ pMMX150 256k L2 win95 winamp 3 >50% CPU vs.
	...

4/27    Is the cache expansion port on different brands of PC motherboards
        compatible? ie, can i take a cache module from one motherboard and
        plug it into another to increase cache memory to 512k?
        \_ Absolutely yes, unless the modules are not compatible.
           \_ how many computers have you built?? there's no place to
              add the L2 cache on most MBs. Plus most pentium/I/II (non-xeon)
	...

10/5    overclocked my Celeron 300A to 450 MHz. ~jctwu/pub/mendocino.
        \_ YouGo Girl
        \_ Hey, and I put nitrous in my Yugo!
           \_ the new Celerons are very well-engineered and -fab'd. My bet
              is that Intel had to cripple them to 66 MHz bus speed so as
              not to compete with the Pentium 2. -jctwu
	...

1/4     I want to test how my servers behave during a disk failure and
        a RAID reconstruction so I want to simulate a hardware failure.
        How can I do this in Linux without having to physically pull
        a drive? These disks are behind a RAID card and run Linux. -ausman
        \_ According to the Linux RAID wiki, you might be able to use mdadm
           to do this with something like the following:
	...

9/13    Thanks to Jordan, our disk server is no longer virtualized. Our long
        nightmare of poor IO performance should hopefully be over. Prepare for
        another long nightmare of poor hardware reliability!
        ...
        Just kidding! (I hope)
        In any case, this means that cooler was taken out back and shot, and
	...

2/18    Why does the system seem so sluggish lately?
        \_ Slow NFS is basically always the answer. --toulouse
        \_ Any truth to the rumor that soda will be decommissioned this summer?
           \_ Absolutely none. Soda might go down temporarily while disks are
              reorganized and stuff so soda doesn't suffer from such shitty
              performance nearly as much, but no, we've gotta maintain NFS and
	...

7/28    Does it make sense to defragment disks on VMWare? My 80GB disk
        on VMWare isn't really using 80GB, it just uses what it needs.
        Will defragment do anything to it?
        \_ If you want to speed up disk operation in your VM, it's best to
           defragment the disks in your VM, then defragment the disk on your
           host machine where the VM files are.
	...

5/10  I have large spare disks on several machines, all on same net.
      How can I combine them into one big visible network file system?
      \_ you want either a clustered file system (eww expensive) or look into
         smoething like a distributed file system (afs, global fs).
      \_ The startup I work for makes a distributed NAS product that's free
         for the first four terabytes if you'd like to try it.
	...

5/2     I have a 1Gbps switch. It is connected to a SANS RAID-1 with
        two WD Green 1T that takes 1Gbps connection, as well as a laptop
        that is also 1Gbps. Online benchmarks show *sustained* transfer
        rate of about 1/2 of 1Gbps with the WD Green... cool!!! But
        in practice, I'm only getting 68Mbps (read SANS->PC file transfer),
        far below what I expected. The switch says both devices are using
	...

12/9    Another idea for the CSUA that lets you spend money and maybe get some
    cool toys. Instead of buying a beefy server (like say, a massive server
    with 20 386DX processors), buy a few cheap machines (like the ones
    mentioned below) that have good disks and work on failover / load
    balancing. A netscaler or other piece of hardware is complete overkill,
    but maybe hacking an OpenBSD box could do the trick. The idea is that
	...

12/3    Are any of you CSUA alums working at Intel?  Is it possible that we
        might be able to hit Intel up for donated/partially donated (reduced
        price) Core i7 Xeons when they come out?  Who would be a good person
        to contact about something like that?  We're of course willing to put
        out for them - perhaps we'll tattoo an Intel logo on toulouse if that's
        what they want :-p  -- steven
	...

11/29   I'm experimenting with virtualization, and as a poor college student
        I'm wondering what the best alternatives for virtualization are, and
        how best to cut my teeth on messing with non-linux platforms (or I
        guess interesting stuff on Linux would work too). Right now I've got
        FreeBSD7 running on KVM on my home computer (on a Core 2 Quad), and am
        somewhat at a loss as to how to use it. (More details: bridged
	...

11/11   I want a home nas so my laptops aren't always running out of space,
        what's a good buy?
        \_ I did a bunch of research and ended up with Dlink DNS-321. It
           is newer than DNS-323 with less problems. It doesn't have as
           much buffer as DNS-323, but if you're transfer files bigger
           than 32 megs, the sustained rate for both are equivalent. I
	...