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Date:      Thu, 18 May 1995 22:55:52 -0700 (PDT)
From:      "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
To:        steve2@genesis.tiac.net (Steve Gerakines)
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.org, robin@interlabs.com
Subject:   Re: Adaptec 2940?
Message-ID:  <199505190555.WAA15849@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
In-Reply-To: <199505190321.XAA05650@genesis.tiac.net> from "Steve Gerakines" at May 18, 95 11:21:26 pm

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> 
> Here's another one.  Gateway 2000 486DX4/100 EISA, Anigma mb.
> 
> [10:12pm]/usr/local/src/ram-speed% cc -O2 -o ram-speed ram-speed.c
> [10:13pm]/usr/local/src/ram-speed% ./ram-speed
> 49005fb0   0.332 uS/op 3.01e+06 op/S 11.480 Mb/S
> 8938c0df   0.130 uS/op 7.70e+06 op/S 29.371 Mb/S
> System was idle.
> 
> Btw- There was some discussion a while back about Intel "Stepping 0"
> Intel CPU's.  When I last booted 2.0 it reported stepping 0 for the CPU.
> What does this mean anyway?  My system originally was a DX2/50 but I
> switched to the 33Mhz clock and got a clock tripled DX4 overdrive.

If I recall correctly someone out there had a DX4 stepping 0 and where
having some problems.  They called Intel who denied that a stepping 0
of the DX4 chip was ever done.

Now we have a second person with a stepping 0 486DX4 chip, care to
send me the complete CPUID output and if you can get the serial number
and the SX number off the chip I will see what Intel says about this.

[For those who do not know about SX numbers, well, I just found out
for my self, they can tell you more about that chip than any other
number there is, but it requires an NDA with Intel to get the SX listing.

Note only that Intel says I should *always* specify on any CPU order the
correct SX number to get the chip I really want.  The A8050266-100 is
*not* enough to necessarily get a P54C-100 3.4V chip.  I must add the
correct SX963 for a stepping 5 or SX957 for a stepping 4 chip of the
``Standard'' version.  If you have an SX958 (Hi Robin!!!) this is
what is called a ``VR'' version of the chip, but no one can tell
me what *exactly* a VR version is, some said it mean ``Voltage Reduced'',
others told me it meant ``Voltage Regulation''.  Gee, and I thought
I was talking to the manufacturer who sould know what there part
nomenclature means :-(.

They also told me all of the official Intel Distributors should know
all about these numbers.  Well I called a few of them, what I found
was that some of them could tell me what SX number parts they had,
others had never even heard of the SX number, and these are from
*OFFICIAL* Intel component distributors.

Needless to say it looks like Intel has really made it very hard to
do business with them.  They say get the SX data from distribution,
distribution says get the DX data from Intel.  No one I talked to
had a clue about what the SX numbers really mean (thanks to a back
door and the fact I am under Intel General NDA due to contract work
I was able to get more data about it).  They are also haveing an Intel
Pentium apps engineer get back to me about all the various flavors of
the chip (I see no less than 10 in what I have, and have heard of others
that are not even in it yet like a 2.9V part :-().

-- 
Rod Grimes                                      rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Accurate Automation Company                   Custom computers for FreeBSD



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