2011 small summary

I was less active this year and unfortunately couldn't keep any of my promises. I still have quite lot of readers of my eComStation 2 installation article. It is quite surprising as I don't think that I'm the only one who described an installation process of this operating system. Unfortunately, I didn't use it much and I decided not to upgrade to new version. Because of this I am leaving usage review for somebody else (at least for now). However, I hope somebody found that article interesting and maybe even useful.

I was less active on collecting CPUs recently however I had some new additions and photos. Not everything is on my gallery but sooner or later I'll put photos of all my CPUs. Some new additions will include Kendall Square Research cpu set, HP Alpha 21364 1300 MHz, some PowerPC, MIPS, Zilog Z380 and other items. You already can find new CPUs from last big update in march such unfinished HyperSPARC, VIA Nano Quad Core ES, Intel C8008, HP PA-RISC 8700 3AA2-3105, Hitachi SH-3 and SH-4 and others. Probably it is not that "epic" as last update but still was interesting and with lots of unusual items. I am not going to expand my collection in such pace as earlier but I still looking for some items like intergraph or fairchild clipper, at&t hobbit and some rare items. My focus is still to have several new architectures before I feel more or less completed my original aim to have all major CPU architectures in my collection.

This year wasn't very interesting in hardware too. My jetway jnc-81 died this summer. Jetway replaced it with JNC-84E-LF. It is quite similar board but it has newer amd 785G+SB750 chipset (compared to 780G+SB700) whose main feature is updated graphics. It also uses AMI BIOS instead of Award and supports more AMD CPU models (though I still use Athlon II X2 235E). I removed my 750GB WD disk and use only NAS server for data. One NAS server green WD 1.5GB hard drive died but I replaced both disks with Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3TB. Read performance nicely surprised me. It is SATA 3 disk so it might be even faster on new interface as it seems that it hits the boundary on the first part of the benchmark. It is five platter disk so it might not be the best disk for NAS but 3TB should be enough for a very long time for me. I just hope they won't fail anytime soon. I've made a service to report S.M.A.R.T. data to ensure some early detection this time.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 read/write benchmark

The last but not the least I've upgraded my mother's computer. It features Asus M5A99X motherboard and 8GB DDR3 RAM now (1600Mhz by specifications, but works only as 1333MHz because Phenom doesn't support faster speeds, at least like I understood). It replaced old Asus M2A-VM HDMI motherboard with 4GB DDR2 RAM. Motherboard has modern UEFI bios and it also successfully unlocked my Phenom II X2 555 to quad core. Now folding@home is almost twice faster because of this two additional cores. Graphics card remained the same NVIDIA Geforce 450GTS but even it seems a little bit faster at folding. There is one caveat that it consumes almost 300W of energy because of folding (I would use about 120W on idle). Electricity will become more pricey next year so I am thinking to stop or limit gpu or cpu folding but it depends on situation. It still uses about 200W if only GPU or CPU active.

More or less it is everything this year. I don't have any specific plans for next year but I think I'll have some changes too. I hope to replace my old HP PSC-2355 multifunction printer/scanner device. My NAS server hardware can be upgraded too but it is not a priority. It will be more a software year probably. I hope for NetBSD 6 release finally. It looks quite promising for me. Though I use Fedora Linux 16 as main system currently and it probably will be the one for some time. Maybe Haiku and other partially hobby systems will be used more often too as they progress. I'll keep upgrading NetBSD on DEC Alpha system though I still wasn't successful to load X server on it. Finally, I'll keep testing for some OSes and software on my VIA VT-310DP. 

I don't know if I'll update my main computer. There are always lots of interesting thoughts what I want to have and to use. Jetway JNC-84 wasn't so friendly with my systems as JNC-81so there is a possibility that I'll change platform but it is not a priority too. I still quite satisfied with current performance. 

So that is everything I want to share for now. Till the next time.

Jetway JNC81 (NC81-LF) doesn't support AMD Athlon II X2 250e (and probably C3 stepping) CPUs

I had an opportunity to get AMD Athlon II X2 250e 3GHz 45W CPU. I planned to upgrade it from my current 235e model. Unfortunately, it appeared that Jetway JNC81 (NC81-LF) didn't support it. Though it is a bit to fast conclusion but I think this motherboard just doesn't support any C3 revision Regor Athlon II X2 CPUs. So you probably won't be able to use 270u and similar Regor C3 CPUs (even 240e if it is not C2 stepping one) but I can't confirm it. I contacted to Jetway support and they replied that the BIOS won't be updated to this motherboard (because they don't have access to Award BIOS code and they can't even tell what is actually supported). The only option is to get updated Jetway JNC84 model with AMI BIOS. I decided that it will be to "pricey" for me right now (300 MHz upgrade is just too small). I just sold 250e. If you plan to upgrade your JNC81 be aware that you need to test compatibility especially with newer cores.

250e was heavier than 235e and used a little bit different, more rugged heat spreader. It was manufactured at 48th week of 2009. It is 9-10 months earlier than introduction date and 12 weeks later than my 235e. AMD probably released them only when they had sufficient quantity. You usually can't find them on the market as they used for OEM. I bought one in ebay. Unfortunately, I was forced to sold it very soon but it was confirmed working by the new owner.

Shift back to mini-itx (first experience)

So so... As I promised after new year I had some hardware changes. I returned to mini-itx platform once again. This time I had more reasons than just experiment as it had been with VT-310DP. Firstly, I wanted to lower power usage (I don't play much and don't do big computational projects, because of this Intel system is just absolutely unused power beast for me. Yes, I thought about it when I had bought it, however, my expectations didn't materialized and objectives changed a little bit). Secondly, I expected somehow better compatibility with various operating systems and easier environment configurations. New Intel platform couldn't provide that. What is more, I hoped to set up everything with as little time as possible ("perfecting" work place for a half or one year is just to much). Lastly I needed more space for my legs :) (there is not much space under the table)...

Purchase

Unfortunately, purchase process didn't go as well as I had planned initially. I ordered MSI AM-780E mini-itx motherboard with dual-core Athlon Neo CPU in January, however, it appeared that it hadn't been released yet. I was told to wait until mid of March. And I waited... but then I got an answer that I should wait one more month and it might be not released at all. I decided to change it as I didn't want waste time anymore and I ordered the most similar motherboard which e-shop had (from Germany). That was Jetway JNC-81 with quite similar configuration and the same chipset. The main reason I was a little bit disappointed because I didn't like mini-itx motherboards with CPU sockets. I see true mini-itx motherboards only with soldered very low power  cpus. However, I didn't have a choice (I wanted dual core CPU and, of course, Intel Atom wasn't an option). I chose Athlon X2 235e CPU for it (as it was an only 45W dual core in stock in Lithuania. Quad core 600e was available too but it was considerably more expensive). I had some problems in acquiring RAM too. I wanted to get Kingston CL5 but they had become out of stock just after my order. I was forced to get CL6. MSI AM-780E was released eventually but I prepared my computer for work by that time.

The other parts included Akiwa GHB-B05-5 enclosure, Seasonic SS-250SU 250W PSU and Jetway AM2 Low Profile heatsink for JNC81. Hard drives were taken from old computer as always.

Setup

Current configuration is:

Athlon X2 235e 2.7 GHz 45W TDP
Jetway JNC81 
Jetway AM2 Low Profile heatsink for JNC81 (replaced with default AMD cooler)
2x2GB Kingston KVR800D2S6/2G RAM SO-DIMM DDR2 800
Seasonic SS-250SU 250W PSU
Akiwa GHB-B05-5 mini-itx enclosure
(old ones)
Samsung HD160JJ 160GB
WD CAVIAR GP 750GB (WD7500AACS)

Setup was quite smooth except that I installed one RAM module incorrectly at first (I needed to push it more firmly). First problem was loud fans and hot operating temperature without case fan (it was included). I resolved this problem by changing Jetway fan with fan from AMD stock heatsink. It was a little bit higher but with controllable speed depending on load (four pins header) and lower noise. However, case fan was the bigger problem as it was just very loud. I slowed it with fan resistor. After that noise level and temperatures became acceptable. I found one BIOS problem. If you turn off quick power on self test, post tests RAM continuously. You must to press esc to process further (or just to set quick power on self test to enable which is default). Integrated video takes 128 MB from your RAM by default (+128MB sideport memory soldered to motherboard). There is an issue that I didn't resolve. USB ports are working in slow 1.0 mode from USB headers (aka front USB). USB ports in the back panel works correctly in ehci (2.0) mode. I might resolve this in the future.

Windows, NetBSD, Linux, Haiku

I didn't need to reinstall Windows 7 (more accurately Windows Embedded 7 CTP1). It recognized drivers correctly and everything worked out of the box except that I needed to reinstall graphic driver  (ATI catalyst). 1GBit network download/upload speed was slower from my NAS server with one big (0.5-4GB) file than in Intel platform (~30-40MB/s instead of 50MB/s) but it appears to be a usual speed from Realtek NICs. I had an issue with my old network cable (which came with router). Then I inserted it network worked only at 100MBit/s. Solution was to change a cable...

My other long time dream was to make NetBSD as primary desktop system. This time I tried to make it seriously. As I had some experience with it after some years playing with it and using it on VT310-DP NAS server it helped me a lot this time. I decided to compile most packages from pkgsrc (not downloading binaries). It might be slower but you just need to start compiling (make install clean) and all dependencies will be fetched correctly and without interruptions. I don't know why but it is not the case when you set PKG_PATH variable and download binaries. You will always find stalled downloads this way (especially if there are a lot of dependencies). It took me four-five days and two complete reinstall to setup everything but in the end I got the most usable desktop NetBSD system I have ever had. I doesn't mean that there are no problems but I have Gnome 2.28.1, OpenOffice 3.1, Firefox 3.5.8 with flash plug-in (the biggest headache was to make sound work in flash), developing enviroment (gcc, opejdk7, gtk, qt, some IDE, RAD tools, shell, etc), video, music, samba, ntfs-3g, radeon-hd, correct shutdown and so on. Unfortunately, cpu scaling doesn't work and it seems a problem with ACPI driver to manage CPU p-states. There is no proper driver in NetBSD currently. I need to restart pulseaudio every time after restart to make sound work. Videos doesn't work full screen and even with bigger resolutions. I recompiled kernel with newer release 5-0 maintenance kernel (2010-04-17). It solved problem with detecting USB devices (I needed to reattach mouse after first boot often with generic 5.0.2 kernel).

NetBSD 5.0.2 amd64

I didn't test Linux much but Fedora Linux 13 Beta1 installed without any problems. CPU scaling, network and sound works as it should. I don't think that it will much difference than with earlier systems after some configuration. Linux shows good support for a common hardware currently.

I even tried Haiku current (2010-04-17 or 2010-04-18). It installed and booted without problems too. Network worked from the start (I don't know if 1Gbit/s works). I played with several applications but it was limited to that.

That's all for now.