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Re: The Henry Spencer Effect
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Eric Chomko
Sep 18, 2007, 11:21:55 AM9/18/07
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On Sep 18, 1:17 pm, kT <cos...@lifeform.org> wrote:
> Hi Everybody!
>
> I was really surprised how quickly I was able to identify and reproduce
> the Henry Spencer Effect, after just a couple of weeks into the project.
>
> For those of you unfamiliar with this amazing effect, it's the breakdown
> of obsolete hardware and software systems under the burden of operating
> at modern standards. Generally, it is manifested in the overloading of
> the DMA channel, resulting in the corruption of files during large file
> transfer, usually when multitasking, with the inevitable tragic results.
>
> The K6 Socket 7 motherboards of the 66 MHz FSB variety with the highly
> integrated chipsets are the most problematic, especially when the bus
> chips also integrate video, but the Super Socket 7 100 Mhz FSB systems
> are much more immune to this. For instance, this system is a very old
> K6-2 3DNow system, and the only problem I'm having is very slow keyboard
> interrupt response when running continuous cable radio Jazz streaming.
> Most likely the keyboard problem will disappear if I upgrade to a modern
> audio card and drivers, and replace the SCSI bus controller and SCSI
> drive with the IDE drive for which this system was originally designed.
>
> Yesterday, I actually got Orbiter to run on a 500 MHz K6-2 3DNow box. It
> was a real mess to find an nVidia driver capable of accomplishing that,
> and I still have to tweak the driver version to get it to be stable, but
> that is a major accomplishment in my book of old dinosaur experiments.
>
> Thanks Henry! You're a genius.
> Hi Everybody!
>
> I was really surprised how quickly I was able to identify and reproduce
> the Henry Spencer Effect, after just a couple of weeks into the project.
>
> For those of you unfamiliar with this amazing effect, it's the breakdown
> of obsolete hardware and software systems under the burden of operating
> at modern standards. Generally, it is manifested in the overloading of
> the DMA channel, resulting in the corruption of files during large file
> transfer, usually when multitasking, with the inevitable tragic results.
>
> The K6 Socket 7 motherboards of the 66 MHz FSB variety with the highly
> integrated chipsets are the most problematic, especially when the bus
> chips also integrate video, but the Super Socket 7 100 Mhz FSB systems
> are much more immune to this. For instance, this system is a very old
> K6-2 3DNow system, and the only problem I'm having is very slow keyboard
> interrupt response when running continuous cable radio Jazz streaming.
> Most likely the keyboard problem will disappear if I upgrade to a modern
> audio card and drivers, and replace the SCSI bus controller and SCSI
> drive with the IDE drive for which this system was originally designed.
>
> Yesterday, I actually got Orbiter to run on a 500 MHz K6-2 3DNow box. It
> was a real mess to find an nVidia driver capable of accomplishing that,
> and I still have to tweak the driver version to get it to be stable, but
> that is a major accomplishment in my book of old dinosaur experiments.
>
> Thanks Henry! You're a genius.
Turn it into a Linux box (but an older version like RedHat 7.2) and be
done with it.
Eric
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