ProductThe Dell PowerEdge 1600SC is a server box (tower format). | ||||||||
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Update: Issues with nVidia 6200 cardIt has been reported that a Dell PowerEdge 1600SC with BIOS revision A12 doesn't work with a PCI nVidia 6200 card. Two beeps are heard, but no video is displayed. I'm using an nVidia 5200 "Apollo" card with no problems in a 1600SC system with BIOS revision A09. | |||||||
Power SupplyThe power supply is 450W, non-redundant. Some models have a redundant power supply setup (i.e. two separate power connectors).Optical Drives | ||||||||
ProductThe Dell PowerEdge 1600SC is a server box (tower format). | ||||||||
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| There is a curiously long pause of around two full minutes while the LSI Logic card is apparently are doing domain validation on my probably-highly-suspect attempt at providing a SCSI bus for the four SCSI drives in the machine. | ||||||||
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This pause only occurs when booting from a fully powered-off state, not when rebooting. | |||||||
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ProductThe Dell PowerEdge 1600SC is a server box (tower format). | ||||||||
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hardly a standard configuration. The SCSI drives are driven by the LSI Logic MPT Fusion 53C1030 which is an integrated single-channel LVD Ultra 320 SCSI controller (on the motherboard). There are two IDE connectors on the motherboard. There's also
a hot-plug kind of SCSI enclosure available, but in that case all your drives would have to be SCSI drives, which can make it awkward to boot some older linux distros.
PCI slots | ||||||||
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Power SupplyThe power supply is 450W, non-redundant. Some models have a redundant power supply setup (i.e. two separate power connectors).Optical Drives | ||||||||
ProductThe Dell PowerEdge 1600SC is a server box (tower format). | ||||||||
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Here, I'll just list the main components of the system, and the linux drivers used to drive them.
The Ubuntu distribution 6.06 LTS (aka Dapper Drake) properly detects all of the hardware in this system. See here for an excellent guide to the recommended installation procedure.
Disk Drives | ||||||||
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The system has room for six hard drives, either SCSI or IDE. This one is using four SCSI and two IDE, hardly a standard configuration. The SCSI drives are driven by the LSI Logic MPT Fusion 53C1030 which is an integrated single-channel LVD Ultra 320 SCSI controller (on the motherboard). There are two IDE connectors on the motherboard. I added an extra ATA 133 controller in the second 32-bit PCI slot, mostly because IDE cables are so short. There's also a hot-plug kind of SCSI enclosure available, but in that case all your drives would have to be SCSI drives, which can make it awkward to boot some older linux distros. | |||||||
| > > |
The system has room for six hard drives, either SCSI or IDE. This one is using four SCSI and one IDE, hardly a standard configuration. The SCSI drives are driven by the LSI Logic MPT Fusion 53C1030 which is an integrated single-channel LVD Ultra 320 SCSI controller (on the motherboard). There are two IDE connectors on the motherboard. There's also a hot-plug kind of SCSI enclosure available, but in that case all your drives would have to be SCSI drives, which can make it awkward to boot some older linux distros. | |||||||
PCI slots | ||||||||
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Power Supply | ||||||||
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Memory | ||||||||
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The system uses 184 pin DDR PC2100 CL2.5 ECC registered 128x72 memory, max it can use is 4GB in four 1024MB pieces (four slots). This kind of memory is also called DDR266. PC2100 refers to the bandwidth of the memory. A PC2100 module has a bandwidth of 2.1GB/sec. The term DDR266 refers to the effective front-side bus speed, i.e. twice the data transferred per cycle compared to a non-DDR 133MHz system. You can of course use faster memory to get closer to matching the 400MHz frontside bus speed, e.g. DDR PC2700 DDR333, but it's still expensive (in 2006). DDR PC2700 has a bandwidth of 2.7GB/sec and is designed for use in systems and motherboards with a 166MHz front-side bus, i.e. with an effective front-side bus speed of 333MHz. | |||||||
| > > |
The system uses 184 pin DDR PC2100 CL2.5 ECC registered 128x72 memory, max it can use is 4GB in four 1024MB pieces (four slots). This kind of memory is also called DDR266. PC2100 refers to the bandwidth of the memory. A PC2100 module has a bandwidth of 2.1GB/sec. The term DDR266 refers to the effective front-side bus speed, i.e. twice the data transferred per cycle compared to a non-DDR 133MHz system. You can of course use faster memory (in theory, to get closer to matching the 400MHz frontside bus speed, e.g. DDR PC2700 DDR333), but the motherboard is only capable of 2.1GB/s bandwidth so it's a waste to use this type of memory, as it's still expensive (in 2006). DDR PC2700 has a bandwidth of 2.7GB/sec and is designed for use in systems and motherboards with a 166MHz front-side bus, i.e. with an effective front-side bus speed of 333MHz, but it will also work in slower systems such as the 1600SC. | |||||||
The contents of /proc/meminfo for Dapper Drake look like this:
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Motherboard | ||||||||
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The motherboard is a ServerWorks GC-SL (GC stands for "grand champion"). | |||||||
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The motherboard is a ServerWorks GC-SL (GC stands for "grand champion"). | |||||||
CPUThe system can take two Intel Xeon CPU (it has two socket 603 INT-mPGA, Intel 860 chipset). The frontside bus speed is 400MHz (i.e. it's using DDR memory with a 200MHz clock frequency. DDR memory transfers data on both the rising and the falling edges of the clock cycle). | ||||||||
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| SCSI ID:10 IBM DRHS36D 80.0 SCSI ID:15 IBM DRHS36D 80.0 | ||||||||
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Ultra133TX2 (tm) BIOS Version 2.20.0050.10 Maxtor Ultra ATA 133 Controller by (c) 1999-2001 Promise Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Detecting / D0 Not Detected D1 MAXTOR 6L080L4 LBA 76345MB Ultra DMA 6 D2 Not Detected D3 Not Detected IDE BUS Master Enabled | |||||||
| GRUB Loading stage 2 | ||||||||
ProductThe Dell PowerEdge 1600SC is a server box (tower format). | ||||||||
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There is a floppy drive, mounted vertically on the right-hand side of the optical drive bays.
VideoThe video is an integrated ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL with 8MB SGRAM. There's no AGP slot on the | ||||||||
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motherboard (it's a server, after all). | |||||||
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motherboard (it's a server, after all). I tested playback of 1080i ATSC streams using an nVidia 5200 PCI card, and it worked very well, see the link for more info. | |||||||
EthernetThe 1000baseT (gigabit) ethernet is provided by an Intel Corporation 82540EM Ethernet Controller, and thee1000 module in the linux kernel drives this just fine.
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ProductThe Dell PowerEdge 1600SC is a server box (tower format). | ||||||||
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A useful page gives some hints on how to go about installing Microsoft's beta version of Vista. For Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2, the main hint was that Microsoft Windows Vista requires the VMware tools driver for networking. Because Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 does not include a vlance (pcnet32) driver for the network adapter, you must use the vmxnet network adapter to enable networking. A driver for this adapter is included in VMware tools. You must install VMware tools to use networking in Microsoft Windows Vista guests. The procedure isn't quite as simple as they make it sound, as you have to use the device manager and prod it to search for the driver on the VMware tools mount point, but you're used to Microsoft's foibles by now. | |||||||
BIOS Boot MessagesThe normal BIOS boot messages for this machine looks something like this. There is a curiously long pause of around two full minutes while the LSI | ||||||||
ProductThe Dell PowerEdge 1600SC is a server box (tower format). | ||||||||
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The Ubuntu distribution 6.06 LTS (aka Dapper Drake) properly detects all of the hardware in this system. See here for an excellent guide to the recommended installation procedure.
Disk DrivesThe system has room for six hard drives, either SCSI or IDE. This one is using four SCSI and two IDE, | ||||||||
| Changed: | ||||||||
| < < |
hardly a standard configuration. The SCSI drives are driven by the LSI Logic MPT Fusion 53C1030 on the motherboard. There are two IDE connectors on the motherboard. I added an extra ATA 133 controller in the second 32-bit PCI slot, mostly because IDE cables are so short. | |||||||
| > > |
hardly a standard configuration. The SCSI drives are driven by the LSI Logic MPT Fusion 53C1030 which is an integrated single-channel LVD Ultra 320 SCSI controller (on the motherboard). There are two IDE connectors on the motherboard. I added an extra ATA 133 controller in the second 32-bit PCI slot, mostly because IDE cables are so short. There's also a hot-plug kind of SCSI enclosure available, but in that case all your drives would have to be SCSI drives, which can make it awkward to boot some older linux distros. | |||||||
PCI slots | ||||||||
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There are two 32-bit PCI slots, and the others are 64-bit slots, suitable for SCSI cards like the Adaptec 39160 or the Adaptec 3950 which work reliably in linux. | |||||||
| > > |
Power SupplyThe power supply is 450W, non-redundant. Some models have a redundant power supply setup (i.e. two separate power connectors). | |||||||
Optical DrivesThere are two bays for optical drives. We can scan the ATAPI bus to see the device ID the drives are using as follows: | ||||||||
| Line: 82 to 84 | ||||||||
Floppy DriveThere is a floppy drive, mounted vertically on the right-hand side of the optical drive bays.Video | ||||||||
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The video is an onboard ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL. | |||||||
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The video is an integrated ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL with 8MB SGRAM. There's no AGP slot on the motherboard (it's a server, after all). | |||||||
EthernetThe 1000baseT (gigabit) ethernet is provided by an Intel Corporation 82540EM Ethernet Controller, and thee1000 module in the linux kernel drives this just fine.
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| Line: 91 to 94 | ||||||||
AudioThe sound is provided by a Creative Labs Audigy2 sound card (added into one of the two 32-bit PCI slots, not part of the original machine), and the ALSA subsystem drives this. | ||||||||
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Physical DimensionsThis big brown steel box is 17 inches high, 8.5 inches wide and 22.5 inches deep. | |||||||
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Physical DimensionsThis big brown steel box is 17.6 inches high, 8.57 inches wide and 22.53 inches deep. | |||||||
| The front panel is plastic, opens with a sliding catch at the top (unless it's locked using the little key), and contains power and reset buttons which depress tiny little switches on the incredibly fragile-looking circuit just above the hard drive bay (take care when sliding in the drive enclosure, to avoid damaging this circuit). There are two pairs of little feet on the base of the unit, that stick out an inch or so, to help it keep its balance. | ||||||||
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WeightProbably a bit over 100 pounds, when five hard drives and two optical drives are installed.Serial port | |||||||
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WeightThe unit weighs 76lb without any drives. Probably around 90 pounds, when five hard drives and two optical drives are installed.Serial port | |||||||
There's one serial port. Used for apcupsd package.
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Parallel port | |||||||
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Parallel port | |||||||
| Haven't tested the parallel port. | ||||||||
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Installation | |||||||
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Linux Installation | |||||||
| It's convenient to install Ubuntu Dapper Drake, or Novell/SuSE SLES 10 on this machine. It also works OK with Novell/SuSE SLES 9, although there was a very occasional problem with the LSI Logic MPT Fusion SCSI controller. | ||||||||
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Suspend and Hibernate | |||||||
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Suspend and Hibernate | |||||||
| Don't work in Dapper Drake. | ||||||||
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Rear I/O | |||||||
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Rear I/O | |||||||
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| Line: 118 to 121 | ||||||||
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MemoryThe system uses PC1600 DDR ECC memory, max it can use is 4GB in four 1GB pieces (four slots). The contents ofproc/meminfo for Dapper Drake look like this:
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| > > |
MemoryThe system uses 184 pin DDR PC2100 CL2.5 ECC registered 128x72 memory, max it can use is 4GB in four 1024MB pieces (four slots). This kind of memory is also called DDR266. PC2100 refers to the bandwidth of the memory. A PC2100 module has a bandwidth of 2.1GB/sec. The term DDR266 refers to the effective front-side bus speed, i.e. twice the data transferred per cycle compared to a non-DDR 133MHz system. You can of course use faster memory to get closer to matching the 400MHz frontside bus speed, e.g. DDR PC2700 DDR333, but it's still expensive (in 2006). DDR PC2700 has a bandwidth of 2.7GB/sec and is designed for use in systems and motherboards with a 166MHz front-side bus, i.e. with an effective front-side bus speed of 333MHz. The contents of/proc/meminfo for Dapper Drake look like this:
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cat /proc/meminfo | ||||||||
| Line: 149 to 153 | ||||||||
| VmallocChunk?: 99944 kB | ||||||||
| Changed: | ||||||||
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CPUThe system can take two Intel Xeon CPU, this one is using two running at 2GHz. | |||||||
| > > |
MotherboardThe motherboard is a ServerWorks GC-SL (GC stands for "grand champion").CPUThe system can take two Intel Xeon CPU (it has two socket 603 INT-mPGA, Intel 860 chipset). The frontside bus speed is 400MHz (i.e. it's using DDR memory with a 200MHz clock frequency. DDR memory transfers data on both the rising and the falling edges of the clock cycle). The system here is using two processors running at 2GHz. Step code SL6EM. Markings on CPU are: 2000DP/512L2/400/1.5V - SL6EM 3247A747-0443. | |||||||
cpuid | ||||||||
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ProductThe Dell PowerEdge 1600SC is a server box (tower format).DriversHere, I'll just list the main components of the system, and the linux drivers used to drive them. The Ubuntu distribution 6.06 LTS (aka Dapper Drake) properly detects all of the hardware in this system. See here for an excellent guide to the recommended installation procedure.Disk DrivesThe system has room for six hard drives, either SCSI or IDE. This one is using four SCSI and two IDE, hardly a standard configuration. The SCSI drives are driven by the LSI Logic MPT Fusion 53C1030 on the motherboard. There are two IDE connectors on the motherboard. I added an extra ATA 133 controller in the second 32-bit PCI slot, mostly because IDE cables are so short.PCI slotsThere are two 32-bit PCI slots, and the others are 64-bit slots, suitable for SCSI cards like the Adaptec 39160 or the Adaptec 3950 which work reliably in linux.Optical DrivesThere are two bays for optical drives. We can scan the ATAPI bus to see the device ID the drives are using as follows:cdrecord dev=ATAPI -scanbusand the result is like this on Dapper Drake:
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01.01a01 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Joerg Schilling
NOTE: this version of cdrecord is an inofficial (modified) release of cdrecord
and thus may have bugs that are not present in the original version.
Please send bug reports and support requests to <cdrtools@packages.debian.org>.
The original author should not be bothered with problems of this version.
cdrecord: Warning: Running on Linux-2.6.15-26-686
cdrecord: There are unsettled issues with Linux-2.5 and newer.
cdrecord: If you have unexpected problems, please try Linux-2.4 or Solaris.
scsidev: 'ATAPI'
devname: 'ATAPI'
scsibus: -2 target: -2 lun: -2
Warning: Using ATA Packet interface.
Warning: The related Linux kernel interface code seems to be unmaintained.
Warning: There is absolutely NO DMA, operations thus are slow.
Using libscg version 'debian-0.8debian2'.
cdrecord: Warning: using inofficial version of libscg (debian-0.8debian2 '@(#)scsitransp.c 1.91 04/06/17 Copyright 1988,1995,2000-2004 J. Schilling').
scsibus0:
0,0,0 0) *
0,1,0 1) 'HL-DT-ST' 'RW/DVD GCC-4480B' 'C103' Removable CD-ROM
0,2,0 2) *
0,3,0 3) *
0,4,0 4) *
0,5,0 5) *
0,6,0 6) *
0,7,0 7) *
scsibus1:
1,0,0 100) 'SONY ' 'DVD RW DW-D22A ' 'BYS2' Removable CD-ROM
1,1,0 101) *
1,2,0 102) *
1,3,0 103) *
1,4,0 104) *
1,5,0 105) *
1,6,0 106) *
1,7,0 107) *
This means that if, for example, we want to read the contents of an unsuspecting disc
(e.g. the Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 on DVD, kindly sent in July 2006 as part of MSDN subscription)
in the Sony drive, we'd use:
/usr/bin/readcd -v dev=ATAPI:1,0,0 f=./vista.isoThe output would be as follows (it's not all that slow, despite the warnings): scsidev: 'ATAPI:1,0,0' devname: 'ATAPI' scsibus: 1 target: 0 lun: 0 Warning: Using ATA Packet interface. Warning: The related Linux kernel interface code seems to be unmaintained. Warning: There is absolutely NO DMA, operations thus are slow. Read speed: 22160 kB/s (CD 125x, DVD 16x). Write speed: 22160 kB/s (CD 125x, DVD 16x). Capacity: 1638476 Blocks = 3276952 kBytes = 3200 MBytes = 3355 prMB Sectorsize: 2048 Bytes Copy from SCSI (1,0,0) disk to file './vista.iso' end: 1638476 addr: 14931 cnt: 63 Floppy DriveThere is a floppy drive, mounted vertically on the right-hand side of the optical drive bays.VideoThe video is an onboard ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL.EthernetThe 1000baseT (gigabit) ethernet is provided by an Intel Corporation 82540EM Ethernet Controller, and thee1000 module in the linux kernel drives this just fine.
USBThe two USB 1.0 ports.AudioThe sound is provided by a Creative Labs Audigy2 sound card (added into one of the two 32-bit PCI slots, not part of the original machine), and the ALSA subsystem drives this.Physical DimensionsThis big brown steel box is 17 inches high, 8.5 inches wide and 22.5 inches deep. The front panel is plastic, opens with a sliding catch at the top (unless it's locked using the little key), and contains power and reset buttons which depress tiny little switches on the incredibly fragile-looking circuit just above the hard drive bay (take care when sliding in the drive enclosure, to avoid damaging this circuit). There are two pairs of little feet on the base of the unit, that stick out an inch or so, to help it keep its balance.WeightProbably a bit over 100 pounds, when five hard drives and two optical drives are installed.Serial portThere's one serial port. Used forapcupsd package.
Parallel portHaven't tested the parallel port.InstallationIt's convenient to install Ubuntu Dapper Drake, or Novell/SuSE SLES 10 on this machine. It also works OK with Novell/SuSE SLES 9, although there was a very occasional problem with the LSI Logic MPT Fusion SCSI controller.Suspend and HibernateDon't work in Dapper Drake.Rear I/O
MemoryThe system uses PC1600 DDR ECC memory, max it can use is 4GB in four 1GB pieces (four slots). The contents ofproc/meminfo for Dapper Drake look like this:
cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 4087644 kB MemFree: 122124 kB Buffers: 26060 kB Cached: 3432624 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 1902572 kB Inactive: 1885248 kB HighTotal: 3211136 kB HighFree: 6604 kB LowTotal: 876508 kB LowFree: 115520 kB SwapTotal: 2104464 kB SwapFree: 2104096 kB Dirty: 480 kB Writeback: 0 kB Mapped: 1478372 kB Slab: 116672 kB CommitLimit: 4148284 kB Committed_AS: 635292 kB PageTables: 3260 kB VmallocTotal: 114680 kB VmallocUsed: 11692 kB VmallocChunk: 99944 kB CPUThe system can take two Intel Xeon CPU, this one is using two running at 2GHz.cpuid eax in eax ebx ecx edx 00000000 00000002 756e6547 6c65746e 49656e69 00000001 00000f27 0702080b 00004400 bfebfbff 00000002 665b5001 00000000 00000000 007b7040 80000000 80000004 00000000 00000000 00000000 80000001 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 80000002 20202020 20202020 20202020 20202020 80000003 6e492020 286c6574 58202952 286e6f65 80000004 20294d54 20555043 30302e32 007a4847 Vendor ID: "GenuineIntel"; CPUID level 2 Intel-specific functions: Version 00000f27: Type 0 - Original OEM Family 15 - Pentium 4 Extended family 0 Model 2 - Stepping 7 Reserved 0 Brand index: 11 [not in table] Extended brand string: " Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.00GHz" CLFLUSH instruction cache line size: 8 Initial APIC ID: 7 Hyper threading siblings: 2 Feature flags bfebfbff: FPU Floating Point Unit VME Virtual 8086 Mode Enhancements DE Debugging Extensions PSE Page Size Extensions TSC Time Stamp Counter MSR Model Specific Registers PAE Physical Address Extension MCE Machine Check Exception CX8 COMPXCHG8B Instruction APIC On-chip Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller present and enabled SEP Fast System Call MTRR Memory Type Range Registers PGE PTE Global Flag MCA Machine Check Architecture CMOV Conditional Move and Compare Instructions FGPAT Page Attribute Table PSE-36 36-bit Page Size Extension CLFSH CFLUSH instruction DS Debug store ACPI Thermal Monitor and Clock Ctrl MMX MMX instruction set FXSR Fast FP/MMX Streaming SIMD Extensions save/restore SSE Streaming SIMD Extensions instruction set SSE2 SSE2 extensions SS Self Snoop HT Hyper Threading TM Thermal monitor 31 reserved TLB and cache info: 50: Instruction TLB: 4KB and 2MB or 4MB pages, 64 entries 5b: Data TLB: 4KB and 4MB pages, 64 entries 66: 1st-level data cache: 8KB, 4-way set assoc, 64 byte line size 40: No 2nd-level cache, or if 2nd-level cache exists, no 3rd-level cache 70: Trace cache: 12K-micro-op, 4-way set assoc 7b: 2nd-level cache: 512KB, 8-way set assoc, sectored, 64 byte line sizeThere are two processors, with hyperthreading, which show up as four processors in /proc/cpuinfo
when running the linux-image-2.6.15-26-686 kernel (note that the Dapper Drake installer only installs
linux-image-2.6.15-23-386 by default, so you have to install it manually afterwards.
cat /proc/cpuinfo|head -19 processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 15 model : 2 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.00GHz stepping : 7 cpu MHz : 1993.984 cache size : 512 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid xtpr bogomips : 3992.39 Output of
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