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#1
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Utility to test IDE cable connections?
While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a
component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Stick with quality memory from Crucial for instance. Don't mix/match memory either. Another part of the I/O is the delivery cable for ide. Stick with 80 wire versions, 18 inches long, ribbon type. Use default master/slave, where master is at end and slave in middle. "David R" wrote in message ... Are there any (hardware or software) utilities which will test if all the pins in the 40-way connector on an IDE cable have all made proper contact with the socket on the hard drive and/or with the socket on the motherboard? I recently had a strange fault which was due to one of the 40 IDE connections being inadequate. Now, I would like to be able to actually test for such a thing. |
#2
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Lil' Dave wrote:
While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Stick with quality memory from Crucial for instance. Don't mix/match memory either. You seem to be mixing apples and oranges (type of memory and manufacturer). Crucial sells ECC. Another part of the I/O is the delivery cable for ide. Stick with 80 wire versions, 18 inches long, ribbon type. Use default master/slave, where master is at end and slave in middle. "David R" wrote in message ... Are there any (hardware or software) utilities which will test if all the pins in the 40-way connector on an IDE cable have all made proper contact with the socket on the hard drive and/or with the socket on the motherboard? I recently had a strange fault which was due to one of the 40 IDE connections being inadequate. Now, I would like to be able to actually test for such a thing. -- The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to minimize spam. Our true address is of the form . |
#3
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"CJT" wrote in message
... Lil' Dave wrote: While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Stick with quality memory from Crucial for instance. Don't mix/match memory either. You seem to be mixing apples and oranges (type of memory and manufacturer). Crucial sells ECC. You seem to be missing the point . I think the point is that ECC is not necessary for desktop systems if you use good quality non-ECC memory, such as Crucial. The fact that the majority of chipsets on motherboards used for desktop systems can't take advantage of ECC makes it largely a moot point anyway. Alex |
#4
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Lil' Dave wrote:
While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. What's "mystical" about cosmic rays? They do reach earth. Cosmic rays and local radioactive decay can and do do cause computer memory errors (IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 40, Number 1). A test made by IBM on a 4Mbit DRAM found a soft error rate of about 6000 in a billion chip hours. A similar test in a vault under 20 tons of rock produced no errors. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Is there any reason not to use ECC besides some cost and a very small loss of performance? I suppose this comes down to what a "home computer" is. Some may be used to play games and write letters; others may archive a lifetime's worth of work. If not ECC memory, there is advantage to using parity-checked memory; a memory error should cause the computer to halt with a warning, rather than corrupting files. Best wishes, -- Michael Salem |
#5
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Lil' Dave wrote:
While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Stick with quality memory from Crucial for instance. Don't mix/match memory either. The incremental cost of ECC is minuscule and the performance penalty equally so. The only reason _not_ to use it is the paucity of boards that support it (three Bronx cheers for Intel). Another part of the I/O is the delivery cable for ide. Stick with 80 wire versions, 18 inches long, ribbon type. Use default master/slave, where master is at end and slave in middle. "David R" wrote in message ... Are there any (hardware or software) utilities which will test if all the pins in the 40-way connector on an IDE cable have all made proper contact with the socket on the hard drive and/or with the socket on the motherboard? I recently had a strange fault which was due to one of the 40 IDE connections being inadequate. Now, I would like to be able to actually test for such a thing. -- --John Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net (was jclarke at eye bee em dot net) |
#6
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Michael Salem wrote:
Lil' Dave wrote: While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. What's "mystical" about cosmic rays? They do reach earth. I think he means that the odds of the stated symptom being caused by cosmic rays is much less than more conventional sources. So much less that it falls into the 'mystical' category. Cosmic rays and local radioactive decay can and do do cause computer memory errors (IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 40, Number 1). A test made by IBM on a 4Mbit DRAM found a soft error rate of about 6000 in a billion chip hours. A similar test in a vault under 20 tons of rock produced no errors. That rate comes to 1 per 19 years, assuming 24/7 operation. Hey, if you're lucky it was off when that one came through Or you were doing any of the 90% of the time non critical things people normally use a home PC for. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Is there any reason not to use ECC besides some cost and a very small loss of performance? Two good reasons. I suppose this comes down to what a "home computer" is. Some may be used to play games and write letters; others may archive a lifetime's worth of work. It comes down to more than that. The odds of it happening and the consequences if it does (which is an entire probability set of it's own) vs the cost of taking preventative measures. Once in 19 years is a rather rare event and even if it happened that doesn't mean you automatically lose 'important' data. It would have to occur at a particular time that affected a particular thing in a particular manner. Ok, so maybe I lost a 'pixel' in a picture of pooch or it blew a character in of those wonderful SPAM emails that come with garbled text to begin with. Odds are the real impact [pun intended] would be 'erp', unexplained program error, a few curse words about 'microsoft software', and restart [as if THAT never happens even without the help of cosmic rays]. For the typical home user, the odds of losing EVERY thing from a hard drive failure, combined with the traditionally lousy backup regimen, or some other failure that causes the system to go 'nuts' is much, much, higher than worrying about cosmic rays. The odds are higher it'll get bumped at an inopportune time, or that a component will fail, or that a connector will work lose from thermal creep, or any number of things. Hell, the odds of the user screwing his data up HIMSELF is a thousand times higher. And we didn't even touch on getting a virus. If not ECC memory, there is advantage to using parity-checked memory; a memory error should cause the computer to halt with a warning, rather than corrupting files. I agree, if one is using it to calculate warp drive trajectories and an 'oops' may put you inside a sun somewhere. But then I'd be recommending multiple redundant systems too. |
#7
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"J. Clarke" wrote in message
... Lil' Dave wrote: While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Stick with quality memory from Crucial for instance. Don't mix/match memory either. The incremental cost of ECC is minuscule and the performance penalty equally so. The only reason _not_ to use it is the paucity of boards that support it (three Bronx cheers for Intel). Does your typical CPU also have ECC-type functionality for its internal memory and registers? |
#8
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I wrote:
While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. What's "mystical" about cosmic rays? They do reach earth. David Maynard wrote: I think he means that the odds of the stated symptom being caused by cosmic rays is much less than more conventional sources. So much less that it falls into the 'mystical' category. As I understand it, from checking references, 98% of memory errors (presumably in tested, good-quality, memory, running in quality systems with clean power) are soft errors; virtually all soft errors are due to either cosmic radiation or background radioactivity (e.g., atoms of thorium from our weakly polluted environment embedded in the casing of RAM chips). I believe that power supply problems can also cause RAM corruption, which ECC would protect against. Cosmic rays and local radioactive decay can and do do cause computer memory errors (IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 40, Number 1). A test made by IBM on a 4Mbit DRAM found a soft error rate of about 6000 in a billion chip hours. A similar test in a vault under 20 tons of rock produced no errors. That rate comes to 1 per 19 years, assuming 24/7 operation. Hey, if you're lucky it was off when that one came through Or you were doing any of the 90% of the time non critical things people normally use a home PC for. I expect this depends very strongly upon the particular chips, and the environment. However, if I unjustifiably extrapolate from the figures I quote, we get roughly 10^^9/5000 errors per 4MB chip hour, or 250 times this per 1GB chip hour. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Is there any reason not to use ECC besides some cost and a very small loss of performance? Two good reasons. I suppose this comes down to what a "home computer" is. Some may be used to play games and write letters; others may archive a lifetime's worth of work. It comes down to more than that. The odds of it happening and the consequences if it does (which is an entire probability set of it's own) vs the cost of taking preventative measures. Once in 19 years is a rather rare event and even if it happened that doesn't mean you automatically lose 'important' data. It would have to occur at a particular time that affected a particular thing in a particular manner. Ok, so maybe I lost a 'pixel' in a picture of pooch or it blew a character in of those wonderful SPAM emails that come with garbled text to begin with. Odds are the real impact [pun intended] would be 'erp', unexplained program error, a few curse words about 'microsoft software', and restart [as if THAT never happens even without the help of cosmic rays]. For the typical home user, the odds of losing EVERY thing from a hard drive failure, combined with the traditionally lousy backup regimen, or some other failure that causes the system to go 'nuts' is much, much, higher than worrying about cosmic rays. The odds are higher it'll get bumped at an inopportune time, or that a component will fail, or that a connector will work lose from thermal creep, or any number of things. Hell, the odds of the user screwing his data up HIMSELF is a thousand times higher. And we didn't even touch on getting a virus. If not ECC memory, there is advantage to using parity-checked memory; a memory error should cause the computer to halt with a warning, rather than corrupting files. I agree, if one is using it to calculate warp drive trajectories and an 'oops' may put you inside a sun somewhere. But then I'd be recommending multiple redundant systems too. Ultimately we must balance the product of estimated probability of soft errors by its consequence; against the cost and speed loss. Personally I have things I very much hate to lose on my hard disc, so recently chose to buy a motherboard and RAM supporting ECC for maybe an easily affordable extra 50 GBP (to be multiplied by future similar purchases). I didn't do this when ECC was very expensive, though I did prefer parity RAM if possible. As you say, a bit error is likely to be trivial (I did once have a system with a hard error which invariably corrupted a single letter every time I edited and saved a document!) But it can conceivably cause big trouble. I don't want to argue for its own sake, and I don't think there is a "correct" decision. I am quite happy to be called paranoid (=, in some cases, survivor). I ask for further reasons not to use ECC in case I need to re-evaluate my policy. Most people dealing with file servers use ECC, presumably from the same possibly excessive caution as me. I consider some of the data on my own hard disc as more valuable than what is on many servers (though it is rarely rewritten, and more susceptible to hard disc than RAM corruption). Best wishes, -- Michael Salem |
#9
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Alex Fraser wrote:
"CJT" wrote in message Lil' Dave wrote: While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Stick with quality memory from Crucial for instance. Don't mix/match memory either. You seem to be mixing apples and oranges (type of memory and manufacturer). Crucial sells ECC. You seem to be missing the point . I think the point is that ECC is not necessary for desktop systems if you use good quality non-ECC memory, such as Crucial. The fact that the majority of chipsets on motherboards used for desktop systems can't take advantage of ECC makes it largely a moot point anyway. If people simply refuse to buy systems without ECC memory that sillyness will disappear. The point is that non-ECC memory systems are completely vulnerable to such things as Cosmic Rays, without any immediate warnings, and that a complete cure is available for very moderate cost. The cost is probably negative if you include the diagnosis time for other faults. -- Chuck F ) ) Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems. http://cbfalconer.home.att.net USE worldnet address! |
#10
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"CBFalconer" wrote in message
... Alex Fraser wrote: "CJT" wrote in message Lil' Dave wrote: While I agree with another post concerning physical memory (RAM) being a component of I/O can be a problem, there is nothing mystical about it. IE - cosmic ray. Nor do I agree that ECC should be used for an at home desktop. Stick with quality memory from Crucial for instance. Don't mix/match memory either. You seem to be mixing apples and oranges (type of memory and manufacturer). Crucial sells ECC. You seem to be missing the point . I think the point is that ECC is not necessary for desktop systems if you use good quality non-ECC memory, such as Crucial. The fact that the majority of chipsets on motherboards used for desktop systems can't take advantage of ECC makes it largely a moot point anyway. If people simply refuse to buy systems without ECC memory that sillyness will disappear. The point is that non-ECC memory systems are completely vulnerable to such things as Cosmic Rays, Yes. A white paper I've recently found that was published last January indicates that a PC with 512MB of memory running 24 hours a day will sustain a memory error on an average of about every 10 days. See: http://www.tezzaron.com/about/papers...1%20secure.pdf , Appendix B, Calculations, on page 6. -- Bob Day http://bobday.vze.com |
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