Fng

[RayTheRat]

Hello. I'm a new guy but I'm an old guy. I've been working on hardware and software since the days of vacuum tube analog computers. I spent a lot of time working on mainframes in the 70s and 80s. I've been building my own machines for as long as I can remember. Right now I run a dual-core 3 ghz box, but XP will only allow me to see 2 gig of ram, so I'm moving on. The new box will run Windoze 7 Pro. Not that I love M$oft, but I spent a lotta time writing code for Windows-based machines and I'm just familiar with a lot of it.

I've been working with Intel-based machines since the 8088 chip but I prefer AMD processors because....well, just cuz.

I'm a retired programmer but I seem to have found a new career in photography and website design and maintenance. I run my own linux based server from my home and have numerous systems on what we used to call a TAN (Tiny Area Network.)

Right now I'm building the Dreadnought, a dual quad-core Opteron based box with a whole buncha goodies. The build diary is here:
http://www.raytherat.com/dreadnought/Welcome.html

I'm trying to mentally design a liquid cooling system for it. I'd like to find an external cooling tower and add my own pump(s) and cooling blocks. I want to cool the disk drives as well as the CPU. The GPU has its own air cooling system so I'm not gonna worry about it. Until I start overclocking, I'm gonna use the air cooling in the Cooler Master 932 case.

I'm gonna go start connecting some cables.

Ray the Rat in the High Desert

[Rogue210]

Welcome Ray!!!! Wow glad to have u here!!! Gonna hit u up for some of that knowledge!!!!! :clapping:

[Neuromancer]

Welcome t o the forums Rat.

Air cooling should be plenty for your hard drives, google did a big study a while back that I think showed that HDDs have a higher failure rate running cool than hot. (Not saying you want to run them hot but 35-40C is AOK for a HDD.


As for the rest, going to check out hte log now. Must make for some nice wPrime times ;) DVD/BDROM rips must reencode uber fast on that setup :)

There are a few members here with more than 20+ years experience with computers so you will fit right in :)

[Neuromancer]

Finished reading.

The upgrade version of windows 7 installs the same way that Vista did.

Install with no product key as a full retail install from the upgrade disk
then go back and do an upgrade over the trial install this time using your product key.

Personally, I am not a fan of "upgrade installs" so I always do fresh...

MAke sure you have X64 version of 7. My personal feelings on the OS are not favorable, but I do run it. I am a software and hardware junkie and always want the latest. My 24/7 rig though is still running Vista x64 though and going strong after all this time :) (It has been so long since a format reinstall for me I honestly have no clue how long ago I installed it LOL, a year maybe?, compared to quarterly XP installs... its a great OS)

7 should be even better than Vista once I get over all the stuff they broke in it.

[RayTheRat]

I thank those for the welcome. I can agree about more damage coming from overchilled HDDs, but on my present system, I need to keep a 24" boxer fan blowing into the case to maintain drive temps under 50C. When I keep the air moving, they stay consistent at around 32-24 C.

As for knowledge...well, if ya wanna know why they ran Binary Coded Decimal-based machines for banking, I can tell ya about that. (It was to avoid that extra fraction of a cent in interest created with floating point math that some programmers routed into their own accounts.)

I can also tell about the first multi-processor mini-computer (Burroughs B-900...that's who I worked for) which was a great machine...unfortunately those who marketed it didn't know nuttin about computers so I'd have to go in after the installation and make it work right.

Ohh...I started out with a TI-99 toy, then went to a Commodore 64 and then a 128. I considered an Amiga, but went with MS-DOS based machines because there was more of a market for what I wsa doing on the side...writing dBase III applications. I've worked on a vast array of Burroughs systems, from mechanical adding machines to B-7900 and A-9 mainframes, HP3000s, IBM AS400s and a whole buncha server boxes. When I retired I specialized in writing interfaces between machines that didn't speak the same language...like the AS400s. It was a lotta fun to get data out of an Oracle database and into the 400s flat file system although they called it "an object-oriented system. You can call files anything ya want, but if they're just a collection of pre-defined records especially without inheritance, they're flat files.

Yeah...it's been an interesting journey. Most of the time I use the machines for photo editing and other graphic development and from April through October I'm at hot rod cruises, sports car and bike races or on the salt flats. I have a 29 Model A rat rod (what else would a rat have?) and a car that my partner and I are hoping to have ready for the salt this September.

I play blues bass and Hammond organ (I'm much better on bass than organ...but I'm still workin on it) and I'm a widower living alone in a big house that I bought for my wife before I lost her. Things is what they is. Can't change what already is. Oh...I've been a friend of Bill W since 1992.

My main sites are http://www.chevyasylum.com/Welcome.html and http://www.raytherat.com/Welcome.html I maintain a whole buncha other ones. I thought retirement would mean takin it easy, but I've never worked harder nor enjoyed it as much. I'm livin a dream. Best life I've ever had.

Edit: I've ordered a full version of Win 7 Pro. I figured that since it was gonna live on an SSD, I didn't want to fight the upgrade process and scatter the SSD's data. Easier to do it once and not mess with it.

[Chuchnit]

Welcome to the forums Ray!! I bet you could fill our brains with all kinds of programming knowledge. Hope you like our little slice of the internet.

[Kal-EL]

:welcome: Ray, glad you decided to make your first post. Please enjoy the forums and get to know the gang.

Supes :cool3:

[69_Goat]

Welcome to the forum, Ray.

As I was reading your posts, I was envisioning you tweaking Win7 to the nuts. :thumbsup:

[Kal-EL]

As for knowledge...well, if ya wanna know why they ran Binary Coded Decimal-based machines for banking, I can tell ya about that. (It was to avoid that extra fraction of a cent in interest created with floating point math that some programmers routed into their own accounts.)



This was sensationalized by Richard Priors character in Superman where he did the exact same thing to get rich ;)

[RayTheRat]

Welcome to the forum, Ray.

As I was reading your posts, I was envisioning you tweaking Win7 to the nuts. :thumbsup:

That sounds about right to me. I'll tweak it til it begs for mercy. :)

[RayTheRat]

This was sensationalized by Richard Priors character in Superman where he did the exact same thing to get rich ;)

Hmmm. I'm not a movie guy, but I find it interesting, yet it did actually happen. One instance was at a bank in El Paso, TX.

That's why the Burroughs Medium System was developed. At one time, those systems ran at least half of the banks in the country. Since they were based on a BCD storage and processing system, there were no remainders that would occur in a floating point system. Poof! Problem solved. Everything was in even cents. Rounding took place at the OS level and there was no 9 bazillion numbers to the right of the decimal point...just 2. Made using percentages a little interesting, but they had a special data type for that.

Long time ago.

I figger my Dreadnought's gonna be many times more powerful than the largest of the discrete component Medium System, the B-4900. Sucker cost about $2.5 million in the 80s...and if ya wanted to connect terminals to it, ya had to buy a separate datacom (what we used to call networking, but it was all 2-wire direct connect...up to 9600 bps or modem connect at 1800 baud asynchronous or 4800 baud 4-wire full duplex synchronous.) processor to handle the all of the different datacom devices and keep the load off the main processor. I used to customize the protocols used to "speak" with non-standard devices. It was called NDL or Network Development Language.

Long time ago. Real long.

[Kal-EL]

The stroll thru history lane is very interesting Ray, lotsa stuff thats beyond my years in the other direction. :thumbsup:

You wouldnt happen to have bee a teacher at some point would you?

[Buckeye]

Hey Ray, just saw your thread, Welcome !!

Nice interesting story on computers. Back in the 80's I was at Livermore Lab, we still used punch cards and mag tape reels back then. Even the big 7600's had all kinds of crazy stuff connected to them.

That was the Nuke days and just before SDI, they had started to convert the nuclear weapons & test divisons I worked over to CAD CAM, instead of on teh drawing boards that I used to work on.

I have moved to Military Applications at that time when MX Missile and just after the Neutron bombs. SDI brought a whole lot of other crazy devices to the table.

But yes even for Nuke research we still lhad punch cards and mag tape reels back then.

Love your photo collection of WWII Air Birds :)
I have a few interesting pic's from back then I need to scan.

[RayTheRat]

The stroll thru history lane is very interesting Ray, lotsa stuff thats beyond my years in the other direction. :thumbsup:

You wouldn't happen to have been a teacher at some point would you?

I sometimes taught computer concepts, dBase III and conducted classes on the software I wrote for different companies, but I was never a "school system" teacher. I shudder to think about it.

My oldest son tried teaching music at the community college level, but absolutely hated it. Now my youngest son is doing substitute teaching while looking for a gig as an operatic tenor. He's not crazy about the substitute thing, but since he has a wife and baby to care for...well, ya do what ya gotta do.

[RayTheRat]

Hey Ray, just saw your thread, Welcome !!

Nice interesting story on computers. Back in the 80's I was at Livermore Lab, we still used punch cards and mag tape reels back then. Even the big 7600's had all kinds of crazy stuff connected to them.

That was the Nuke days and just before SDI, they had started to convert the nuclear weapons & test divisons I worked over to CAD CAM, instead of on teh drawing boards that I used to work on.

I have moved to Military Applications at that time when MX Missile and just after the Neutron bombs. SDI brought a whole lot of other crazy devices to the table.

But yes even for Nuke research we still lhad punch cards and mag tape reels back then.

Love your photo collection of WWII Air Birds :)
I have a few interesting pic's from back then I need to scan.

I worked on nukes when I was in the army (66-71) I was a fire control (radar/analog computer) tech on Nike-Hercules sites, but spent some time in the launching area
as we decommissioned one of the sites.

One of my recent projects has been to go back over all of my photos from that era and organize 'em with some commentary. Same thing with the photo albums my first wife and I had. If I don't do it, all this history will probably be pitched overboard or maybe kept but not understood.

The army days as well as my time in Europe and North Africa (I was wonna them Marrakech hippies for a while) are on my web server here:
http://www.chevyasylum.com/earlydaze/Welcome.html When I get the whole mess done, I'll burn DVDs for my sons and their wives and I'll even be nice and give a set to my ex-wife. What a nice guy I am, huh? :laughing:

Ok. I gotta call Tyan about the mobo issues. I wonder how that's gonna go.

I should have an update on the Dreadnought later today.

Edit: I forgot to mention the punched card thing. I can't think of any other class of hardware that I hated more than 80-column cars. Instruments of the ol' Debbil hisself. That Livermore labs thing sounds like a kool place to work. My experience with weaponry ended when I left the army and I ended up in the private sector...I went back to college and got me some diplomas and stayed in the financial area of computing for most of my career.

Now I do what I love. Build hot rods (when I can...I got some serious heart trouble that keeps me from workin as hard as I used to,) hang out with racers (having media credentials as a photographer really helps me get into the middle of things at sports car races and on the salt flats) and play the blues. I'm livin a dream...although I've confirmed what I had suspected for quite a while. There just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done. So I decided to give up sleeping...well, for the last week or so...and no, I don't use stimulants to keep me awake, I just keep on goin and goin...maybe when I get this Dreadnought going I can take a coupla daze off. (sure, sure.)

[DrNip]

Guess I'm young. All I was doing in the 80's was atari, ibm pc jr 128 and nintendo. Oh a little Michael Jackson and skateboarding later on! HAHA

[Kal-EL]

Hmmmm, lets see:

1- Level Headed
2- Experienced
3- loves performance
4- has abondoned sleeop

Looks like all the character traits of a future overclockaholic pc performance junky to me :D

[Chuchnit]

Ray all I could think about when seeing your build log was wprime :D Looks like you got a nice setup when its done.

[RayTheRat]

Well..some issues have been resolved. Ain't nuttin fixed yet, but some resolution. I finally gave in and did the last thing possible. I called Tyan. They cleared up several issues. I now know where to connect the wires from the front panel, I know how to use the on-board GDU as well as the Radeon, and finally, I found out why the box wouldn't POST.

This one hurts. The 16 gig of OCZ memory I got is non-registered RAM. The Tyan mobo requires "ECC registred" dimms. I had to go investigate that. Other folks may know this, but it was new to me, so I'll post it here just in case.

It would have been one whole hell of a lot easier if they'd called it "buffered memory" because that's exactly what it is. The dimms have a buffer (or register) between the storage and the memory controller. I'll just post the link rather than typing it all out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_memory

Here's a short snippet:
"They place less electrical load on the memory controller and allow single systems to remain stable with more memory modules than they would have otherwise."

Just frikkin wunnerful. I just put another $500 on my Visa card. I now have another 16 gb of ram coming. I'll try to get a refund on the memory I bought initially, but it's set me back about 3 days.

I guess I could catch up on sleep or something. Besides...the 24 hours of Daytona starts tomorrow...I can't miss that. :)

Another thing I can do is route all the wiring harnesses all neat and tidy.

Some days are like that.

I downloaded wprime (that was new to me) and I'll run it on the current box to see where I stand. Then when I get the 2x4 box running we'll see what we get. I'll report both of 'em.

Stay tuned. I'll update the Build Diary with the new info asap...well, after a nap.

[Kal-EL]

And so the saga begins........................................

[RayTheRat]

And so it continues....

I got a few bling toys today via the UBT. I'm real tired cuz I've had a buncha other stuff going on, but I made a quick update to my build diary to show the new stuff which will require a bit of wiring (and thinking...something I'm not up to at the moment.)

http://www.raytherat.com/dreadnought/page7.html

I started out with the idea of having a visible temperature indicator on the front panel and it sorta got outta hand. :blink:

The new "registered" memory should be here tomorrow (02/02/10) and then we may get a chance to see what happens. I sure hope there's no smoke nor blinding flashes. :scared:

[Kal-EL]

Nice additions. Whats the spec on the fans you will be running?

[RayTheRat]

Right at the moment, they'll be the (I hate to write this) "stock" fans that came with the case.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119160

Just so I can rationalize my decisions, I'll say that I'm gonna use that as a benchmark and if needed, I can adjust from there.

I think I'm a charter member of the "I can't leave nothin stock" club. When I bought my last car (95 Suburban...works great as a photographer's vehicle...and rolling motel room for the salt flats) I told myself I wasn't gonna mess with it. So now it's got an upgraded sound system (mainly the head unit (love the USB thumb drive input), but the speakers, especially the rears are gonna get replaced as soon as the weather warms up a bit cuz they've become kinda crackly in the cold), an electronic shift kit and old skool painted rims with dog dish hubcaps and beauty rings. The next mod I'd like to do is lower it 4 inches all around and add lakes pipes to the sides...functional pipes so I could open 'em up to pure V8 noise.
http://www.chevyasylum.com/95burb/Welcome.html

Oh..and the electric fan and remote start/keyless entry (I already have these parts on hand) on and frikkin on...
http://www.chevyasylum.com/95burb/Welcome.html

I hope the Rat gets running this year, as well as the Monte Carlo. I got too many damned projects.

[Kal-EL]

Haha, u got lots to do, good thing you don't sleep ;)

[RayTheRat]

Haha, u got lots to do, good thing you don't sleep ;)

Yanno, before the heart trouble got bad (2004/05) I could start early in the morning with a bare block and a buncha parts...and by 10 pm, I'd have a running car (bottom of this page):
http://www.chevyasylum.com/Previous%20Projects/68nova/68nova08.html

But I can't work that hard anymore. I gotta take breaks. And I'm fallin asleep at the keyboard. Hmmm...to go to bed or not...that is the question.

More will be revealed.

[RayTheRat]

It's alive! :thumbsup:

http://www.raytherat.com/dreadnought/20100202_035r4.jpg

Boots from the SSD in 15 seconds. Amazing. :cool3:

I'll have the build diary updated soon.

[Kal-EL]

It's alive! :thumbsup:

http://www.raytherat.com/dreadnought/20100202_035r4.jpg

Boots from the SSD in 15 seconds. Amazing. :cool3:

I'll have the build diary updated soon.

:happy2:

[Neuromancer]

Man that is one violent looking rig... I like it!

[RayTheRat]

Man that is one violent looking rig... I like it!

Thanks. It's just beginning to awaken. Those long exposure shots sure make it look malevolent. It's gonna be one STEEP learning curve, since I missed the Vista experience and went from XP to Win 7. I got a lot to learn.

I tried to run wPrime last nite and kept getting "Unexpected errors." Hell, aren't any program crashes unexpected? Jeeze. Back in the day when I wrote code for a living, if I'd written that I woulda had my hands slapped for not providing more diagnostic info.

I finally blundered thru disabling User Control and got it to run. It ran the 32m test in 16.34 seconds. Compare that to my current, dual-core, 3ghz, 2gig ram XP box that ran it in 84+ seconds; roughly 5 times the speed of the dual quad-core systems.

I guess you could say that it ran that test "at 5 times the speed" of the XP box, even though that's sorta misleading. But it's a hell of a lot faster.

I sure like those 15 second boot times.

[Kal-EL]

Don't forget to set the thread count in benchmark setttings. 4 threads for a quad core, 8 threads if running HT. Run CPU-Z to see how many threads are running. Benchmark will run faster with matching thread count ;)

[RayTheRat]

Don't forget to set the thread count in benchmark setttings. 4 threads for a quad core, 8 threads if running HT. Run CPU-Z to see how many threads are running. Benchmark will run faster with matching thread count ;)

I doubled the number of threads to 16 and ran 32M in 9.81 Sec. The I doubled it again and I got 10.25. It seems that 16 (twice the number of cores) is the optimal at this point. This is v2.00. I'll do further testing.

[Kal-EL]

Ah, v2.00 runs a bit quicker than the standarized version 1.55.

v2.00 is actually intended for multiple socket/server environments. Version 1.55 is the standard used to compete globally.

Some people report the benchmark running quicker with the scenario you described in doubling or adjusting the thread count. Me, personally, when pushing up into the higher clocks, it actually hurt my times.

Also, if you run the benchmark several times, your times improve and you can pull down your best time. Usually between the 1st and 10th run in 32m.

What is the clock speeds at 9.82sec? Can you take a screen shot and post :D

[RayTheRat]

I'll give it a shot. I've had a whole lotta fun getting the video and sound cards installed. They're almost working right, but not exactly.

Back in a bit with some numbers.

[RayTheRat]

Ok. Here we go.

http://www.raytherat.com/temp/wPrime_20100204_03.jpg


Here are the results as I stored 'em in a text file:

8 threads: 8.80
8 threads: 8.47
8 threads: 8.49
8 threads: 8.51
8 threads: 8.60
8 threads: 8.78
8 threads: 8.80
8 threads: 8.55
8 threads: 8.36
8 threads: 8.43

In a previous run, I had one at 8.30.

The change between the first tests (earlier this morning) and the second set (these two runs) was the installation of the Radeon controller. I hadn't gotten that working until early this afternoon. Btw, the problem turned out to be it's slot location. It has to be in the slot closest to the memory dimms...I dunno if that's slot 0 (wouldn't surprise me) or it couldn't be seen.

Here's the 2ncont set from this afternoon:

http://www.raytherat.com/temp/wPrime_20100204_04.jpg

16 Threads: 9.714
16 Threads: 9.784
16 Threads: 9.630
16 Threads: 9.728
16 Threads: 9.841
16 Threads: 9.125
16 Threads: 9.811
16 Threads: 9.691
16 Threads: 9.473
16 Threads: 9.523

8 Threads: 8.445
8 Threads: 8.405
8 Threads: 8.344
8 Threads: 8.634
8 Threads: 8.427

I got tired of staring at it and cut things short. But it looks like the video card install certainly changed things. It runs best with 8 threads rather than 16 now. PFM. (pure frikkin magic.)

This old fat's had enough fun for this part of the day. I need a bit of rest before I get ready to put in another 12 hours.

[Kal-EL]

Times look quick but there are no recorded benchmarks with this processor over at hwbot.org. In fact, they have to add this processor to their database.

Anybody else have this chip for comparisons sake?

[RayTheRat]

Quick update. Dreadnought is now in the "production" area. I got tired of running back and forth. I wrote all that in the build diary:
http://www.raytherat.com/dreadnought/page8.html


Here's a photo of the current setup.
http://www.raytherat.com/dreadnought/20100204_013r4.jpg

A lot more needs to be done, but progress is being made.

[Kal-EL]

Hubba hubba that sucker's a beastly build :good:

[Neuromancer]

That should last you a couple of weeks ;)

Looking good Rat

[DrNip]

Nice, now lets take care of that old white keyboard.

[Neuromancer]

Judging by the color scheme on that board I do not think he will be getting rid of it anytime soon. Reminds me of the old IBM KB's


And hey... my bench rig has an old $1 for 3 KBs garage sale pickup!

[RayTheRat]

Well, the KB didn't work so well...a coupla keys were dead, so I ordered a red backlit unit that otta be here on 2/10. Photos then.

[Kal-EL]

RayTheRat dabbling with "Gateway" benchmarks over at the bot.............

Everyone watch closely here as an Overclockaholic begins down the dark path :morpheus: