Here's one for y'all....
We have a sfw RIP for color proofers that runs under NT.
The results so far....
Using an ASUS dual CPU PSB-D m/b and 2 x 500 MHz Celeron, we have been
able to over-clock the CPU's to 562 MHz with stability. 256 MB RAM,
dual hard drives (one to read the PS file, one to raster it) and we're
using BusMaster drivers for the HD's to allow synchronous i/o to the
drives.
Our RIP sfw. is very RAM and CPU intensive. Does anyone have
suggestions to make the server faster? Any replies would be
appreciated.
--
Michael Kulyk
MACSPECTRUM
416-236-5585
416-236-5586 (fax)
"My God - it's full of stars!"
Subject: Re: WinMac Digest #430 - 10/04/99
From: "Michael Evans" <mikonic@mindspring.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 23:32:28 -0400
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
I wonder if any one on the list has had any experience connecting a windows
98 machine to an HP JetDirect EX Plus driving an HP 6MP laser printer.
I am a Mac person and have no experience with a 98 machine. The mac setup
took about 3 minutes. To an NT server took about 15 minutes.
The drivers on the HP site are for Win NT or 95, no mention of Win 98 which
I thought was more modern than 95....
Any hints appreciated...
Cheers,
----------------------------------------------------------
Michael Evans
Manager of Software Development * Photo Systems, Inc.
3301 Wood Valley Road, NW * Atlanta, GA, 30327-1515
Voice: (404) 846-9386
Fax: (404) 240-0878 * Cell: (404) 229-3930
E-mail: evans@photosys.com * michael_evans@mindspring.com
----------------------------------------------------------
Subject: RE: [WinMac] cheap and fast NT server
From: John Hanks <jbh@biology.usu.edu>
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 22:34:44 -0600
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
[much stuff snipped]
I have (so far) built 4 machines with the ABIT BP6 and have found it to be
very reliable with both Linux and NT4.0 Workstation. The BP6 has 2 socket
370 sockets and only accepts ppga celerons. There is a dedicated website at
www.bp6.com with stories of overclocking, setup tips, drivers, etc. They
claim to be able to install NT onto UDMA/66 drives, and I plan to try that
with the next machine which I will build later this week. For 2 of the
machines I used Celeron 500s without overclocking and the other 2 have 366s
overclocked to 523 (they worked fine at 550, but I was paranoid about the
temp. control in the rooms they are in). I haven't installed more than 128MB
of RAM in any of them and won't until prices drop.
I benchmarked my machines and they faired pretty well (beating or nearly
matching) PentiumIII 500s at everything CPU related. Disk performance wasn't
spectacular but I'm hoping UDMA/66 will help this.
This thread is pushing the limits of WinMac Cooperation, but I'd be happy to
share my experiences off-line with anyone interested. This is a very cheap
way to put together a reliable and speedy dual cpu machine. A BP6
motherboard and 2 366 celerons are roughly the same cost as a single PIII
500 (without a motherboard). I've heard rumors of 400s overclocked past
600Mhz.
I suppose I could keep it within the WinMac umbrella by mentioning how well
they run Linux+Samba+netatalk....
jbh
John Hanks
System Administrator
Dept. of Biology
Utah State University
Subject: Emailing thingies
From: Dan Thurgood <dan@ergo-id.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 99 12:59:37 +0000
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Hi gurus!
What software is available for me to put on my ASIP 6.2 server so it will
call into my Pipex Dail email account and then redistribute the mail to
individual users on my network? I thought that ASIP Mail server did this,
but it seems to my uneducated eye to actully be a full on mail serving
solution ie, DNS and everything. I just want a software solution to
distribute mail from an external account. It has to do both MacOs and
Win, hence asking you guys! The Macs use Claris Emailer 2.0 for their
client and the PCs are using MS Internet Mail.
Cheers, Dan Thurgood.
Subject: Re: [WinMac] Re: Win98 printer drivers
From: Bruce Johnson <johnson@Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 07:25:35 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Michael Evans wrote:
>
> I wonder if any one on the list has had any experience connecting a windows
> 98 machine to an HP JetDirect EX Plus driving an HP 6MP laser printer.
>
> I am a Mac person and have no experience with a 98 machine. The mac setup
> took about 3 minutes. To an NT server took about 15 minutes.
>
> The drivers on the HP site are for Win NT or 95, no mention of Win 98 which
> I thought was more modern than 95....
>
> Any hints appreciated...
Actually, Win98 is Win95 with a few bug fixes and some chrome on the outside.
AFAICT any 'Win95' driver works under Win98.
But, you're better off going to Adobe and getting their Postscript driver. In
my experience it's a much better print driver than Windows PS driver. The PPD
files you need should be on Adobe's web site, or on HP's.
Subject: Re: [WinMac] Re: Win98 printer drivers
From: "Welch, John C." <jwelch@aer.com>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 11:18:09 -0400
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
The only caveat to this is for Tektronix printers which can be AMAZINGLY
fussy. If you have problems with Adobe's PS driver on Tek printers, use the
Tek drivers.
> From: Bruce Johnson <johnson@Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU>
> Reply-To: "The Windows-MacOS cooperation list"<winmac@xerxes.frit.utexas.edu>
> Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 07:25:35 -0700
> To: The Windows-MacOS cooperation list <winmac@xerxes.frit.utexas.edu>
> Subject: Re: [WinMac] Re: Win98 printer drivers
>
> Michael Evans wrote:
>>
>> I wonder if any one on the list has had any experience connecting a windows
>> 98 machine to an HP JetDirect EX Plus driving an HP 6MP laser printer.
>>
>> I am a Mac person and have no experience with a 98 machine. The mac setup
>> took about 3 minutes. To an NT server took about 15 minutes.
>>
>> The drivers on the HP site are for Win NT or 95, no mention of Win 98 which
>> I thought was more modern than 95....
>>
>> Any hints appreciated...
>
> Actually, Win98 is Win95 with a few bug fixes and some chrome on the outside.
> AFAICT any 'Win95' driver works under Win98.
>
> But, you're better off going to Adobe and getting their Postscript driver. In
> my experience it's a much better print driver than Windows PS driver. The PPD
> files you need should be on Adobe's web site, or on HP's.
>
> * Windows-MacOS Cooperation List *
>
Subject: Re: cheap and fast NT server
From: "Daniel L. Schwartz" <expresso@snip.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 11:27:45 -0400
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Mike,
There are a few landmines here, not the least is the disk access and
reliability.
Having two UDMA (IDE) drives on the same channel is NFG, because only one
drive can be accessed at a time. Use two independent SCSI drives and use
NT's software RAID 0 for striping instead: Put the pagefile and the spool
folders on this partition, and sit back & allow NT to do the dirty work for
you. There's all sorts of motherboards out there with built-in adapcrap
7880 UW chips on them, so you don't even lose a PCI option slot.
I'm not a big fan of overclocking, since it can bring up all kinds of
mysterious, non-reproducible crashes. Overclocking is OK for gamers, but
not for enterprise use. Instead, take a look at the Athlon (K7) CPU
architecture: The floating point performance is outstanding.
Also, pay close attention to the PCI bus: I/O throughput is your most
important parameter. With good I/O you don't need a ton of RAM; and since
RAM has about tripled in price in the last few months, RAM cost is (once
again) something to pay attention to.
Lastly, along these same lines, avoid anything ISA like the plague - With
the exception of modems (because PCI modems "husband" the host CPU for
signal processing). Unfortunately, every ISA interrupt generates 4 PCI
interrupts as it crosses the PCI-ISA bridge - Yuck! Where the trouble
arises is in the i8042 ISA controller for keyboard, mouse, floppy, serial,
and parallel ports: Instead, since this will be driving one (or more)
printers(s) plus the dongle, move the parallel port(s) onto a PCI option
card - Preferably one that supports DMA (Direct Memory Access). With a DMA
parallel port card, the CPU doesn't need to manage it nearly as much. [If
you use Win2k you can move the dongle to the USB port, as Birmy is doing.
In addition, all versions of Win2k - Including Professional (workstation)
support AFP/IP natively.]
Hope this helps!
Dan
At 08:19 PM 10/4/99 -0400, Mike K. wrote:
>Here's one for y'all....
>
>We have a sfw RIP for color proofers that runs under NT.
>
>To make our product more cost-friendly (cheaper) we have been
>experimenting with dual-Celeron machines.
>
>The results so far....
>Using an ASUS dual CPU PSB-D m/b and 2 x 500 MHz Celeron, we have been
>able to over-clock the CPU's to 562 MHz with stability. 256 MB RAM,
>dual hard drives (one to read the PS file, one to raster it) and we're
>using BusMaster drivers for the HD's to allow synchronous i/o to the
>drives.
>
>We are trying to market this solution to our clients as "buy our RIP and
>get an NT server for free!" Kinda'' catchy, eh? (Canadian accent here)
>
>Does anyone have any experiences in creating fast and cheap (I hope they
>are not mutually exclusive) NT servers using dual Celeron's and then
>over-clocking them?
>
>Our RIP sfw. is very RAM and CPU intensive. Does anyone have
>suggestions to make the server faster? Any replies would be
>appreciated.
>
>Thanx,
>
>--
>Michael Kulyk
>MACSPECTRUM
>416-236-5585
>416-236-5586 (fax)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
THERE ARE NO ATTACHMENTS TO THIS MESSAGE, SO IF ONE
APPEARS WITH IT, DO NOT OPEN OR DOWNLOAD IT!
<mailto:expresso@snip.net>=20
Webmaster for <http://www.Faulknerstudios.com>,
<http://www.BrakeAndGo.com>
This message is =A9Copyright 1999 by Daniel L. Schwartz, and
may not be reproduced except in its entirety.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: [WinMac] Re: cheap and fast NT server
From: Michael Bartosh <bartosh@apple.tamu.edu>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:36:27 -0500
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
>
>
> I'm not a big fan of overclocking, since it can bring up all kinds of
>mysterious, non-reproducible crashes. Overclocking is OK for gamers, but
>not for enterprise use. Instead, take a look at the Athlon (K7) CPU
>architecture: The floating point performance is outstanding.
Um- he said cheap. (athatlon???)
Your dual ppro idea last week was more appropriate. I even bought one
of the boards for my linux box :-)
-mab
Subject: Re: Re: cheap and fast NT server
From: "Daniel L. Schwartz" <expresso@snip.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 12:48:50 -0400
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Mike,
Actually, the dual PPro Intel PR440FX isn't quite as well suited for this
duty, because of the FPU performance. I actually did consider the PR440FX,
but it's more suited for straight file & print serving. If my own memory
isn't failing me, Spec95FP for the 200 mHz PPro is about 6, while the
Athlon is about 30... See the difference?
Also, the ATAPI ports on the PR440FX don't seem to support UDMA. This
means that the CPU utilization will almost peg out when the hard drive is
accessed - This will force him to use the built-in SCSI, or use one of the
3 or 4 PCI slots for a Promise UDMA card. [Note that some of the PR440FX
boards come with only 3 PCI slots - The 4th shared PCI socket is not
soldered in.]
Being familiar with Mike Kulyk's RIP software, I know it also takes
advantage of the PII & PIII (MMX & SIMD) instruction extensions for
improved speed (just like the MMXCore Photoshop plug-in does with Photoshop
5), and I factored that in as well.
Athlon prices aren't too high, as long as you don't sit on the bleeding
edge of speed. Fron The Chip Merchant, today's prices:
PC CPUs 1760 AMD-Athlon-500 OEM $230.00
PC CPUs 1762 AMD-Athlon-550 OEM $330.00
PC CPUs 1763 AMD-Athlon-550 Box $334.00
PC CPUs 1764 AMD-Athlon-600 OEM $502.00
PC CPUs 1765 AMD-Athlon-600 Box $518.00
Notice the 120% price increase for a 20% speed increase?
Those Athlon's are starting to look pretty good now...
Cheers!
Dan
At 10:36 AM 10/5/99 -0500, Mike B. wrote:
>>
>>
>> I'm not a big fan of overclocking, since it can bring up all kinds of
>>mysterious, non-reproducible crashes. Overclocking is OK for gamers, but
>>not for enterprise use. Instead, take a look at the Athlon (K7) CPU
>>architecture: The floating point performance is outstanding.
>
>Um- he said cheap. (athatlon???)
>
>Your dual ppro idea last week was more appropriate. I even bought one
>of the boards for my linux box :-)
>
>-mab
Subject: dual processors on NT Servers
From: Tom Roth <tomroth@wfubmc.edu>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 13:45:34 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
With all the talk about servers these past few days I thought I'd ask a
question that I've been thinking about for some time now. Just how much
advantage is there using dual processors on an NT Server? Does the NT
operating system really take advantage of the two processors? Is that
extra processing power then available to just any program or they have
to be specifically written to use two processors? I've got a dual
300Mhz Dell PowerEdge 4200 running NT Server with 256MB of RAM.
______________________________________________________________________
Tom Roth Wake Forest University School of Medicine
tomroth@wfubmc.edu Dept of Biomedical Communications
http://www.wfubmc.edu/biomed/ Medical Center Blvd
Tel 336.716.4493 Winston-Salem, NC 27157-1011
______________________________________________________________________
Subject: Re: dual processors on NT Servers
From: "Daniel L. Schwartz" <expresso@snip.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:06:44 -0400
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Yes, NT is, and always has been. a fully symmetrical multiprocessor
operating system. Unlike MacOS & NetWare, which are pretty much
asymmetrical, NT's thread scheduler will gladly dispatch tasks to the
available CPU's by which one has the lightest load.
BTW, along these same lines, this was one of the reasons that NT blew
linux out of the water in the controversial NT-linux shootout in early
summer: The testbed was a 4 CPU Dell box with 4GB of RAM. When the second
round of tests were performed - With RedHat & Microsoft engineers each
optimizing their respective systems - it was discovered that linux didn't
have a multithreaded TCP/IP stack!
------
Just imagine the (hypothetical) men's room conversation at the lab:
"Let's see, we don't have a multithreaded IP stack. Let's throw this into
the kernel and recompile..."
"What about regression testing for quality & compatibility before putting
this out there?"
"Ha Ha! This is Linux - As long as it works on this machine, fine.
Everyone else'll have to edit the kernel to suit their own "needs:" This is
"open source" at it's finest!"
------
Going back to the original NT question, applications don't need to know
anything about the hardware: They are "cradled" by the HAL (Hardware
Abstraction Layer) of NT, and NT will "break up" the application into its'
DLL (Dynamic Link Library) threads and distribute the threads amongst the
CPU's.
[Note that there *is* an exception: old 16 bit apps, which are run in
NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine, an x86 emulator): Normally, NTVDM's run in
their own separate processes; but there are a few cases where the
"DefaultSeparateNTVDM" key has to be set to "No" in order for multiple
legacy apps to communicate between each other. In this case, NTVDM.EXE will
also run on only a single CPU. The obvious answer is to get rid of as much
of the 16 bit crap as possible: On a well-oiled NT Server this shouldn't be
too difficult]
A good source of NT reference material is Sean Daily's "Optimizing Windows
NT" (IDG Books, ISBN 0-7645-3110-7): It's about $39 or so from the online
book stores (amazon, etc...).
Hope this helps!
Dan
At 01:45 PM 10/5/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
>With all the talk about servers these past few days I thought I'd ask a
>question that I've been thinking about for some time now. Just how much
>advantage is there using dual processors on an NT Server? Does the NT
>operating system really take advantage of the two processors? Is that
>extra processing power then available to just any program or they have
>to be specifically written to use two processors? I've got a dual
>300Mhz Dell PowerEdge 4200 running NT Server with 256MB of RAM.
> =20
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Tom Roth Wake Forest University School of Medicine
> tomroth@wfubmc.edu Dept of Biomedical Communications
> http://www.wfubmc.edu/biomed/ Medical Center Blvd
> Tel 336.716.4493 Winston-Salem, NC 27157-1011
> ______________________________________________________________________
-----------------------------------------------------------------
THERE ARE NO ATTACHMENTS TO THIS MESSAGE, SO IF ONE
APPEARS WITH IT, DO NOT OPEN OR DOWNLOAD IT!
<mailto:expresso@snip.net>=20
Webmaster for <http://www.Faulknerstudios.com>,
<http://www.BrakeAndGo.com>
This message is =A9Copyright 1999 by Daniel L. Schwartz, and
may not be reproduced except in its entirety.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: NT/K7 RIP follow-up
From: "Daniel L. Schwartz" <expresso@snip.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:39:10 -0400
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I just did a search on Pricewatch.com, and the prices for a 500 mHz Athlon
CPU & motherboard package is $379, including UDMA/66 support. If my memory
serves me correctly, figure on Spec95FP numbers of about 4 points per 100
mHz of Athlon (K7) speed, or about a Spec95FP 20 for the 500 mHz unit.
Cheers!
Dan
Subject: ETHERNET SPEED
From: "V. Wysong" <vwysong@infinet.com>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:48:38 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";
x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> What's the simplest way to find the Ethernet speed of my PowerMac 5500's and
> 5400's? I've checked the technical specs that came with the computers and it lists
> everything else except the networking specs. I've also checked Apple's website and
> have not been successful in my search.
Thanks,
V. Wysong
Subject: Re: ETHERNET SPEED
From: "Daniel L. Schwartz" <expresso@snip.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 19:20:13 -0400
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
If you're using the built-in ports, they are 10Base-T (10 megabit per
second, baseband).
If you're using an Asante 10/100 PCI option card, then you can look on the
metal end plate on the card itself to see the lights, which includes a LED
to indicate 100 megabit connectivity.
If you are talking about actual throughput, that is dependant on a lot of
factors, such as packet traffic on the segment, Finder version, whether
you're pushing files to or pulling files from a server, how fast the server
is, whether it's a lot of little files or a single, large file, etc...
Hope this helps!
Dan
At 06:48 PM 10/5/99 -0500, you wrote:
>> What's the simplest way to find the Ethernet speed of my PowerMac 5500's
and
>> 5400's? I've checked the technical specs that came with the computers
and it lists
>> everything else except the networking specs. I've also checked Apple's
website and
>> have not been successful in my search.
>
>Thanks,
>V. Wysong
Subject: Re: [WinMac] ETHERNET SPEED
From: Bruce Johnson <johnson@Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:24:33 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
They're 10baseT, meaning 10 megabit ethernet. Apple did not put 10/100
interfaces on until (iirc) the B&W G3's. certainly no non-G3 Mac has
anything but 10BaseT unless you added it on specifically.
V. Wysong wrote:
>
> > What's the simplest way to find the Ethernet speed of my PowerMac 5500's and
> > 5400's? I've checked the technical specs that came with the computers and it lists
> > everything else except the networking specs. I've also checked Apple's website and
> > have not been successful in my search.
>
> Thanks,
> V. Wysong
>
> * Windows-MacOS Cooperation List *
--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group
End of WinMac Digest
* Windows-MacOS Cooperation List *