================================================================================ The DEC UDB/Multia FAQ ================================================================================ This is the list of Frequently Asked Questions regarding running Linux on the Digital Equipment Corporation's Alpha-processor based Unviersal Desktop Box. [ see Q1.1 `What is a UDB ?' for more details]. It should be read in conjuction with the Linux/Alpha FAQ which is available at the URL http://www.azstarnet.com/~axplinux/FAQ.html. The linux alpha home page can be found at http://www.azstarnet.com/~axplinux/. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INDEX -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Section 1. Introduction and General Information Q1.1 What is a UDB/Multia? Q1.2 What FTP & WWW sites are available about the UDB? Section 2. Hardware details Q2.1 What processor is in the UDB? Q2.2 Can I upgrade the processor in my UDB? Q2.3 Can I overclock the processor in a UDB? Q2.4 How can I reduce the heat generated by my UDB? Q2.5 Does the UDB have to use parity simms? Q2.6 How do I get the geometry of a scsi disk to use in my UDB? Q2.7 How do I get a Diaond Stealth 3D 200 to run in 24 bpp? Q2.8 What is the ZXLP video card that is on my motherboard? Q2.9 How do you disable the onboard TGA on a Multia? Q2.10 I am not getting any keyboard response on my system. Q2.11 What size PCI video cards will fit in a Multia/UDB? Q2.12 What is the fastest X server for the TGA chipset on the UDB? Q2.13 What chipsets are supported by the XFree86 X server that will work in my UDB? Q2.14 How do I get my SyQuest EZ-Flyer to work on my UDB? Q2.15 Linux is reporting that my floppy drive is a 2.88. Is this true? Q2.16 How do I get my Iomega Parallel Port Zip Drive to work on my udb and what tools do I use to format and access the drive? Q2.17 How do get sound running on my Multia/UDB? Q2.18 What sound cards are supported in the UDB? Q2.19 I installed more memory in my UDB which originally had 24MB with 2 SIMMS and now it is missing 8 MB of memmory? Q2.20 How do I get my serial port/modem combo to work at speeds greater than 38.4K? Q2.21 My machine only has one serial port output but supposedly it has two serial ports. How do I use the second one? Q2.22 I am having trouble getting my modem to work on my UDB? Q2.23 What type of scsi controller does my UDB have? Q2.24 I want to install a 2.5" drive and a 3.5" drive in my machine. Are there any problems with doing this? Q2.25 There appears to be an IDE connection on the inside of my machine. Can I use this to connect an IDE hard drive internally? Q2.26 Is there any way to get pcmcia working with the UDB? Section 3. Porting, compiling and obtaining programs Q3.1 How do I run x86 Windows binaries on a UDB running WinNT? Q3.2 How do I run x86 binaires on a UDB running Linux? Q3.3 I was compiling the 2.0.21 kernel and I got some pretty bizarre errors...? Q3.4 Is there a working mpeg3 player for the UDB running linux? Section 4. Installing Linux on the UDB/Boot problems Q4.1 What distributions are available for the UDB? Q4.1.1 The RedHat distribution Q4.1.2 The Debian distribution Q4.2 I need some help in loading the RedHat 3.0.3 linux distribution. Q4.3 RedHat Install hangs Q4.4 Every time my machine boots, it always complains about some error concerning the floppy. Q4.5 I get a ">>>" prompt after cold booting the machine instead of the blue screen and the ARC program. Q4.6 My machine seems to crashes when it boots if I have a serial device (modem, mouse etc.) plugged in. Section 5. Solutions to common miscellaneious problems Q5.1 How fast is a UDB 166/266? ================================================================================ Section 1. GENERAL INFORMATION ================================================================================ Q: What ios a UDB/Multia? Digital Equipment Corporation (aka DEC but now called simply Digital) released a alpha-processor based machine running Windows NT called the Multia. They started selling the machine without WindowsNT and entitled it the Universal Desktop Box and thus is called the UDB. It is currently the preferred low-end entry into the Linux Alpha machine-space due to the large numbers of them that Digital recently dumped on the market at cut-rate prices. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Are there any FTP sites, WWW links or mailing lists resources on the UDB? Tons. 1) http://www.hex.next/~cbbrowne/alpha.html This site has actual images of the Multia and some internal techincal information. It is perhaps the most comprehensive Multia web site around. 2) http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/computers/udb.html Lots of info on the pinnouts and such of the UDB. Definitely a must for would be hardware hackers and such. 3) http://www.wei.com/multia/qshome.html This company used to sell Multias but is permanently out of stock The site still has good marketing info though. 4) Comments on the dumping of DEC Multias http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/alpha/9606/0073.html 5) http://www.annex.co.uk/systems/udbspec.html DECs own Multia pages 6) Red Hat Linux-AXP mailing list archives http://www.redhat.com/support/mailing-lists/archives/axp-list/ 7) The Official Linux/Alpha home page http://www.azstarnet.com/~axplinux/ ) http://www.io.com/~ix/geek/alpha.html ) ftp.miranda.org pub/mirrors/redhat/RPMS/alpha ) ftp.gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/Linux-Alpha/ ) ftp://ftp.cs.helsinki.fi/pub/Software/Linux/Kernel ) ftp://ftp.azstarnet.com/pub/linux/axp -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================================ Section 2. HARDWARE ================================================================================ Q: What types of Multias were sold? A: There are three models of UDBs VXB-40 - Soldered CPU - No adjustment capability VXB-41 - Socketed CPU - 166 - 233 - 266 (ZIF socket) VXB-42 - Socketed CPU - 233 - 266 - ??? (ZIF socket) And an Intel based Multia. After DEC released alpha based Multias then name was changed to the Universal Desktop Box (or UDB for short) These machines all use the DEC 21066 Alpha chips and are very much different than the 21064/21164 chips that exist. These machines will *never* be able to use these new chips unless someone designs one doozie of a daughtercard. The 233 UDB uses the 21066A (aka LCA45) while the 166 uses the 21066 (LCA4). Both had (the same) design bottlenecks that show up as memory/cache subsystem performance degradation. Q: Can I overclock my UDB to get more speed out of it (like what is done to Intel processors).? A: Yes on the VX-41 and the VX-42. If you open up your UBD you should be able to see a series of jumpes labeled W7-W9. These set the CPU speed. CPU speed jumper settings (VX41/VX42 only) W9 W8 W7 speed (MHz) -- -- -- ----- 1 1 1 66 0 1 1 100 1 0 1 133 0 0 1 166 (standard setting) 1 1 0 200 0 1 0 233 1 0 0 266 (unsupported) 0 0 0 300 (unsupported) Note: 1 is jumper removed, 0 is jumper installed. There are many safe reports of overclocking the 233Mhz chips to 266Mhz. However, when overclocking the 233Mhz chips to 300Mhz, there are *many* reports of the chip burning itself in a month or 2 of continual up time. It is *NOT* recommended that you overclock a 233Mhz CPU to 200Mhz. Again, this does *NOT* work for the VX-40 which has a soldered 166Mhz processor in it and therefore ignores the jumpers. If you do plan to overclock your 233Mhz UDBs to 266Mhz it is recommended that you only do this if you DON'T have a 3.5 internal drive or an internal PCI card in the PCI slot as this restricts the air flow and adds more heat. It is high recommended that you try to get a cpu fan mounted somehow. With the UDB case there is no really easy way to do this, but it bears considering. Perhaps a fan in a small cardboard tube on top of the unit whrere the air comes out? You will need to get 12V from the machine for this, but you may get that from the unused connector on the SCSI riser inside. A report from a UDB vendor states that they sold over 500+ 233Mhz systems overclocked to 266Mhz with not a single problem yet. The systems have been in production for about a year. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Can I upgrade the processor in my UDB? Only the VXB-41 and the VXB-42 can be upgraded as they have ZIFF sockets. There is a nasty rumor that the VX-41 and the VX-42 models can be upgraded to the the 400Mhz processors if you have the upgraded roms from Digital. THIS RUMOR IS FALSE as Digital doesn't make a chip that will fit into the Multias that is rated at higher than 233Mhz. There is at least one report of this working with an internal video card in place as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How do I reduce the heat generated by my UDB? A: Suggestions for reducing heat are: 1) make sure that wherever it is placed has good ventilation, 2) never cover up the vents, 3) keep it out of the light 4) make sure that the room it lives in stays at or under ~76 degrees F. The internal fan is variable speed and will run faster (and thus make more noise) the hotter it gets. In my experience, the fan spins at a fairly high rate when the machine is first turned on and will settle into a normal slower speed once a stable temperature is established. It is worth noting that the heat generated when it is too hot inside the UDB can cause parity errors in the 12MB DEC simms that DEC shipped in some of the UDBs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Does the UDB have to have parity simms? A: YES! It must be true parity. Note that the "logic parity" that was sold for a while doesn't work. Parity simms are able to actually recover from single bit errors that crop up. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How do I get the geometry of a scsi disk for use with my udb? Answer: The easiest way to set up an unknown scsi drive is as follows: Once in fdisk 1)Run BSD label, in this you will see what Linux needs for cylinders = cylinders, heads = tracks per cylinder, sectors are limited to 63 max. NOTE:Linux will NOT let you use more than 63 sectors. Therefore, the head count and cylinder count will not really match your drive. However, using these drive parameters WILL work. Write them down quit out. 2)Rerun fdisk type "x" takes you to an expert screen enter in the cylinders, sectors and heads of your hard disk, i.e.: c=cylinders 2112 h=heads 16 s=sectors 63 should show 2128896 blocks, done by 2112x16x63= type "r" to return to menu, also saves parameters Type "n" new partition and follow instructions Partition disk as follows: (EXAMPLE ONLY) A = DOS for milo & linload, 1440k B = "/" for root C = "/usr" for user D = "swap" needed for swap space, usual rule is 2x memory size, ie: 32mb x 2 = 64mb swap. Type "t" to change partition "A" to 4 Changed system type of partition 1 to 4 (DOS 16-bit <32M) Type "t" to change partition "C" to swap, enter "82 " for Linux swap code. Type "p" to verify that the partitions have been entered properly. Type "w" to write table to disk. Type "quit" to get back to Linux install program submitted by Stephen Gaudet (sjg@dcginc.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I'm trying to run a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 on a 166Mhz UDB using the S3 ViRGE XFree86 3.2a server in 24 bit mode. However, it coredumps and uses the console in an unusable state. I can get it to work fine in 8, 15, and 16 bit mode. What's wrong? Answer:? If you actually tell it to run at 24-bit depth, it *will* bomb. The 24-bit code is *very* INTEL-specific, and won't work on the Alphas. The best you are going to get on that card is 16bit planes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: My motherboard has a ZXLP video card on it. What is that? A: This is another name for the TGA video chipset. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How do you disable the onboard TGA on a Multia? A: Compile a new kernel without TGA support, plug in your video card in the PCI slot, and attach the monitor cable. Providing your PCI display adapter doesn't do any non-standard things WRT the BIOS, then you should get a blue ARC console on bootup. No jumpers are needed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I am not getting any keyboard response on my system. I have removed all hardware execpt floppy and video and still no keyboard response. I even tried using different video cards. A: This will sometimes happen when you have changed keyboards while the machine is still switched on. While most modern machines don't have a problem with this, the UDB does and it can burn out parts of your machine. It is a good idea *NOT* to swap keyboards or monitors while the machine is on. The same thing applies to using special hardware to share a keyboard and monitor among multiple machines. The two common possible causes: 1) The keyboard lock. Make sure that you haven't locked the keyboard. 2) A blown fuse in front of the keyboard controller. You can probably do it youself. There is at least one report that the local Digital repair shop has fixed a couple of machines with this exact problem. 3) The keyboard controller is dead. This is reall bad since it is not socketed. It is fixable though it'll have to be a soldering job. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What size PCI video cards will fit in a Multia/UDB? A: It is known that the diamond stealth, diamond stealth 3d w/ 4MB dram, ATI Graphics Ultra Pro w/ 4MB and the Matrox Millenium w/4MB RAM will fit. The DIamond Stealth 3D is reportedly a close fit, but does work. The beta 3.2a Xfree work fine, althought appearently it won't do 16 bit at 1280x1024 due to some hardcoded restriction. The Matrox Millenium will fit as well but you need to update the UDB's ARC firmware to the current version. You must also be running a 2.0.27 or later/2.1.16 or later kernel to use the Millennium server; it depends on some new syscalls that weren't available earlier. The ATI GUP fits and works fine. You need the latest milo though (2.0.28). The only problem is it can't run X Windows in 24 bit at resolutions higher than 800x600. It runs at 1280x1024 in 16 bit mode at 76Hz just fine. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What is the fastest X server for the TGA chipset on the UDB? A: The Fastest servers are the 3.1.2-based ones; However, the most stable server is the 3.2 one from XFree86, which allows toggling to VCs and use of XDM, unlike the former. Choose version EV4 to run on the UDB. You can get it from gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/Linux-Alpha/X11/XF86_TGA-3.1.2-bugfix-EV4.gz -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What chipsets are supported by the XFree86 X server taht will work in my UDB? A: Barring size restrictions, you can use any card that has one of the following chipsets: S3, S3V (ViRGE), Mach64, I128, P9000,TGA, SVGA (Matrox Millennium only), Mono -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How do I get my SyQuest EZ-Flyer to work on my UDB? A: There appears to be a driver for the EZ-FLyer but its not very stable. You have to remove printer support so that the driver can se the paralle port. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Linux on my UDB is reporting that my floppy drive is a 2.88. Is this true? A: What is actually being reported is the floppy *controller*. The actual floppy itself is most likely a 1.44 MB floppy. You shouldn't have any trouble treating it just like a 1.44. Make sure that if you format a floppy that you specify 1.44 as the format type. There is a rumor that DEC ran out of 1.44s at one time and did put in 2.88s in some Multias. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How do I get my Iomega Parallel Port Zip Drive to work on my udb and what tools do I use to format and access the drive? I recompiled the kernel to include the parallel-port SCSI stuff and I included the generic SCSI support. When I boot the machine I get: PPA: unable to initialise controller at 0x378, error 1 (Kernel 2.0.27 RedHat 4.1 with all RPM updates) A: I had to change the boot command line to something like this boot sda2:vmlinux.gz ppa=0x3bc Formatting drives on the disk can be done using mformat from the mtools suite. You need a fairly recent mtools for mformat to work on a "hard disk" device like a zip drive and you possibly need to edit your /etc/mtools.conf file; you need a line like this drive c: file="/dev/sda1" and you then format it with 'mformat c:'. You can also try the command mkdos. (i.e. "mkdosfs /dev/sda1") -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How do get sound running on my Multia/UDB? A: Unix linux, you'll need to compile a kernel with either a sound driver build in or a module. Use the Microsoft Sound System compatible driver with the following settings: DMA 3, Port 530, Interrupt 9. Playing sound works just fine. You will need to connect your output device to the headphones and not the line out jack. You need to disable the opbion for MIDI sound. The chip inside the UDB does not support midi. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What sound cards are supported in the UDB? A: Known sound drivers that will work are SoundBlaster, PAS16, and Gravis Ultrasound. Others may work as well but are not confirmed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I installed more memory in my UDB which originally had 24MB with 2 SIMMS and now it is missing 8 MB of memmory? A: The original simms shipped with the machine were special 12MB simms that must remain in the first 2 simms slots. When placed in other slots they only register as 8 MB simms. Rearrange your memory so they are in the first 2 slots. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How do I get my serial port/modem combo to work at speeds greater than 38.4K? A: You need to use the "setserial" program to configure your serial port connected to your modem to talk at a higher speed. Add the line setserial /dev/modem spd_vhi to your /etc/rc.d/rc.serial file. RedHat doesn't install this file, so just create it in rc.d. There are reports that Seyon still doesn't behave properly but that minicom and dip do. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: My machine only has one serial port output but supposedly it has two serial ports. How do I use the second one? A: You need a special Y cable that will split the serial ports. You can build one yourself from the pinouts or order them from various places including Starship Computer Guys. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I am having trouble getting my modem to work on my UDB? A: You can use the straight through 25 pin cable, but make sure it's not turned on when you turn on and boot up the UDB. As the UDB sends all debugging info for SRM to the serial port, it confuses the modem and it doens't work. Just turn the modem on after you've booted and you should be fine. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What type of scsi controller does my UDB have? A: It is an NCR 53c810, which is a fast SCSI II (narrow) not wide and not Ultra. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I want to install a 2.5" drive and a 3.5" drive in my machine. Are there any problems with doing this? A: Yes, major problems. The power supply on the UDB is not capable of supporting more than one hard drive at a time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: There appears to be an IDE connection on the inside of my machine. Can I use this to connect an IDE hard drive internally? A; Yes, there is an IDE connector directly behind the bay for the floppy and hard drives. This is not an EIDE controller so the performance is less than stellar. Any I/O intensive operation (such as copying a very large file) will eat up most of your CPU while it is running). The connector is for a standard 2.5" IDE drive. Note that the pinout is the standard for LAPTOP MICRODRIVE hard drive. It has extra pins for carrying power. You will not be able to use a standard 3.5" IDE drive without using an adapter cable. They do exist but are not common. Contributed by: Hard Data Ltd. (harddata@bigfoot.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Is there any way to get pcmcia working with the UDB? A: In a word, yes. There are reports that with RedHat 4.1 you must use pcmcia-cs-2.8.23 which can be found on the RedHat 4.1 cd or on hyper.stanford.edu. Supposedly there are some inconsistencies in the kernel that cause other version to not compile cleanly. There are several reports that RedHat 4.2 works with pcmcia-cs-2.9.5 One report claims to have pcmcia support working with RedHat 4.1 and0 pcmcia-cs-2.8.23 (from hyper.stanford.edu or from the RH4.1 CD) (although the xircom and smc drivers failed to compile). The same user had little problem with RedHat 4.2 and pcmcia-cs-2.9.5. Note that he had ot use the insmod binary from 4.1 because the stock 4.2 insmod is broke. Both versions required doing a 'strip -x *.o' on the compiled pcmcia modules when put in /lib/modules/2.x.y/pcmcia. Oh, the sources from hyper.stanford.edu don't look in the right places for the xforms stuff with RedHat's file setup but that's an easy fix. Contributed by: Thunderhawk Alpha (seafire@ix.netcom.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================================ Section 3. SOFTWARE ================================================================================ Q: How do I run x86 Windows binaries on a UDB running WinNT? A: You can use FX!32. Look at http://www.service.digital.com/fx32/ for details. This allows NTv4.0 alpha systems to run 32-bit x86 applications transparently. It is a free application and supported through Digitial Services. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How do I run x86 binaires on a UDB running Linux? A: You can use the x86 emulator called "bochs". Its located at: http://world.std.com/~bochs/. It is has good success running both Windows 3.1 in standard mode and some Windows95 applications. Networking does not work however. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I was compiling the 2.0.21 kernel and I got some pretty bizarre errors...? A: Sometimes the kernel needs patches to fix bugs that show up on 64bit architectures like the UDB's Alpha processor. You need to apply the latest Linux/Alpha kernel patch, which can be found at ftp://www.azstarnet.com/pub/linux/axp/sys/axp-diffs-2.0.21.gz For more information, see the Linux/Alpha Kernel Compiler HOWTO at http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/quatrava/AXP-port-FAQ/kernel-build.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Is there a working mpeg3 player for the UDB running linux? A; maplay3 seems to work ok on a UDB; it should be found on any sunsite mirror (apps/sound/players/maplay3-1.1.tar.gz). Contributed by: Thomas Pornin Also, there is mpg123. But to make it run without eating up all the cpu cycles on your UDB you will want to use the "-b" option with a value of 1024. i.e "-b 1024". You can also nice it to -10 or so to give other things a chance to run. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================================ Section 4. BOOTING/INSTALLING LINUX ON A UDB ================================================================================ Q: I need some help in loading the RedHat 3.0.3 linux distribution. A: The RedHat 3.0.3 distribution is several revisions out of date. The current version is 4.2. Check out http://www.dcginc.com/linux.htm for some explicit instructions on how to load the 3.0.3 distribution. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: When I'm installing RedHat on my UDB, and the monitor is connected to a VGA card instead of the TGA, it appears to hang after uncompressing the kernel. How can I finish the install? A: The image that you are using to boot the install has TGA support compiled in, as that is the default video adapter that the UDB has on board. When the kernel is uncompressed, and the TGA driver loaded, the display is switched from the VGA to the TGA. When it appears to hang, just switch the monitor cable from the VGA to the TGA and continue the install. If you have a second monitor available, plug it into the TGA and use that. This saves you from having to switch the cable around inbetween boots. Once you have a kernel compiled, and installed, without TGA support you can use the VGA exclusively. Contributed by: Mike Loseke (mike@verinet.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Every time my machine boots, it always complains about some error concerning the floppy. A: You probably set up a selection to boot from a floppy when you did your install. As this is (probably) still set up in boot selections it would be checking for the floppy at boot time and, not seeing it, generating this error about boot selections. If this is the case, simply remove the boot selection for floppy, verify your remaining ones, and carry on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I get a ">>>" prompt after cold booting the machine instead of the blue screen and the ARC program. A: Type "arc" at the ">>>" console prompt which should boot the ARC program -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: My UDB crashes when it boots if I have a serial device (modem, mouse etc.) plugged in. why? A: The UDB sends all debugging info for SRM to the serial port. This can confuse modems and cause them to work at lower speeds than their max. It can also completely hang the machine. Removing the device (or turning it off if it is a modem) should be enough to let you boot the system. ================================================================================ Section 5. COMMON MISCELLANIOUS QUESTIONS ================================================================================ Q: How do the UDBs compare the Intel systems on performance? Are there any benchmark results ? A: There are many comflicting reports so this is an attempt to make sense out of a very vague answers. First of all there is no simply yes or no. When someone asks about performance they really want to now how fast their programs will run compared to a particular Intel processor. While the UDBs have really high Mhz processor speeds (166 and 233) this does not mean they give you the performance of an Intel processor at that speed. In most cases, the Axp166 will give you the performance of a P100. However, in particular compilation will take longer since you are generating RISC code instead of CISC code (it should be longer on any RISC machine). If you are doing Floating Point intensive code you will probably need a commercial compiler to get good performance as the public domain ones don't seem to be quite up to par at the moment. Also, I/O on the UDBs is a big problem. Basically there isn't enough memory bandwidth to get data across fast enough. And as if that weren't enough, the 166Mhz UDBs have only 256K of cache which is about one 1/4th necessary to get decent performance and aboutr 1/8 necessary to get any real performance. The 233Mhz versions with 1MB of cache do much better but still suffer from low I/O speeds. In short, don't get a UDB if you are looking for blazing speed. You will want to look at the newer alphas with the 21164 chips running at 300+Mhz. They when equiped with the right amount of L2 cache and placed on a motherboard that gives you enough I/O bandwidth to really deliver performance that is vastly superior to all the Pentium and Pentium Pro chips. They do cost a littl more but significantly less than the 2x to 5x speed increases you can get in many cases. Someone ran the BYTE Benchmark program on a Alpha UDB 166. Here are the results. BYTEmark (tm) Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95) NUMERIC SORT : Iterations/sec.: 32.76 Index: 0.84 STRING SORT : Iterations/sec.: 2.79 Index: 1.25 BITFIELD : Iterations/sec.: 11116152.42 Index: 1.91 FP EMULATION : Iterations/sec.: 2.41 Index: 1.16 FOURIER : Iterations/sec.: 480.34 Index: 0.55 ASSIGNMENT : Iterations/sec.: 0.38 Index: 1.45 IDEA : Iterations/sec.: 94.46 Index: 1.44 HUFFMAN : Iterations/sec.: 51.77 Index: 1.44 NEURAL NET : Iterations/sec.: 0.22 Index: 0.35 LU DECOMPOSITION: Iterations/sec.: 19.13 Index: 0.99 ...done... ===========OVERALL============= INTEGER INDEX: 1.319 FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 0.575 (90 MHz Dell Pentium = 1.000) =============================== For comparison, there are the results on a Pentium 120: BYTEmark (tm) Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95) NUMERIC SORT : Iterations/sec.: 55.08 Index: 1.41 STRING SORT : Iterations/sec.: 4.13 Index: 1.84 BITFIELD : Iterations/sec.: 7360309.96 Index: 1.26 FP EMULATION : Iterations/sec.: 3.85 Index: 1.85 FOURIER : Iterations/sec.: 1099.94 Index: 1.25 ASSIGNMENT : Iterations/sec.: 0.48 Index: 1.81 IDEA : Iterations/sec.: 71.43 Index: 1.09 HUFFMAN : Iterations/sec.: 39.93 Index: 1.11 NEURAL NET : Iterations/sec.: 0.61 Index: 0.98 LU DECOMPOSITION: Iterations/sec.: 21.81 Index: 1.13 ...done... ===========OVERALL============= INTEGER INDEX: 1.448 FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 1.114 (90 MHz Dell Pentium = 1.000) =============================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Are there any WWW site run on Multias/UDBs? A: Yes. Check out the following sites: 1) http://www.verinet.com/~mike/box.html Mike is running a 233Mhz Multia called "Phaster" 2) http://www.io.com/~ix/geek/mine.html Lupo is running a 166Mhz Multia as a web server. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Why is the time incorrect on RedHat Linux-AXP running on my machine? A: Not "always" but only when you set it incorrectly. If you boot from ARC console then set your time configuration (CLOCKMODE) to "ARC". You need, or need not, option -u in your /etc/rc.d/rc.system depending if you are using UTC or local time. The Red Hat script always supplies -u with -A to 'clock'. Adjust as required. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: On powerup, I can start arc console and have a timeout and default boot-entry. How can I do the same with SRM? (I don't want to replace SRM/ARC by MILO, but simply boot it from floppy/harddisk.) A: ?