Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 12:42:11 -0400 From: Andrew Heybey <ath@niksun.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: SMP nerd toy report Message-ID: <199904221642.MAA08575@stiegl.niksun.com>
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After reading about the hacks to make Celerons do SMP, I decided to give cheap SMP a try for no real good reason except that I wanted to. I bought: DFI P2XBL/D dual Slot 1 motherboard ($192) 2 Celeron 300A socket 370 processors ($65 each) 2 prewired-for-SMP socket 370 to Slot 1 converters (you don't want to see me with a soldering iron) ($22 each) Case, keyboard, 64MB of memory. ($140 total) I had an ethernet card and a disk lying around and I am using a serial console, so for about $500 (plus shipping) I have myself a very fast system. I have been very pleased with it so far. I installed 3.1-RELEASE for now. At 300MHz (66MHz FSB), my worldstone (CFLAGS="-O -pipe", make -j8 buildworld, softupdates, /usr/src & /usr/obj on the same partition of a Maxtor IDE disk) is about 1:15. At 450MHz (100MHz FSB) "make -j8 buildworld" takes about 0:55. (I know, bad hacker. I promise not to submit any PRs unless they can be duplicated at 300MHz.) I expect that if I got a second disk for /usr/obj that the build would really fly. All in all, I'm a happy nerd. One random question: has anyone ever seen a BIOS that works over a serial line? I'm perfectly happy with a serial console except that I have to drag the system within reach of a monitor if I want to change something in the BIOS. Plus I have to waste a slot for a video card unless I also want to install that everytime I want to poke around in the BIOS. andrew To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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