27 Aug
2014
27 Aug
'14
7:54 a.m.
On Aug 25, 2014, at 12:14 AM, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 12:14 AM, drlegendre .
<drlegendre at gmail.com> wrote:
To amplify Eric's point about big bucks for modern equipment.
At a previous employer where we were doing *bringup* of new processors on
new hardware (Intel Core2 stuff...before the memory controller was integrated
in with the CPU) we had a "front side bus analyzer". It was "double
pumped"
and running at 800MHz (so logically it's running at 1.6GHz). As I recall that
analyzer was in the high $100,000s (ie pushing $1,000,000). We had several
in order to do the analysis/debug. How the thing actually worked with signaling
that fast still amazes me. The analyzer itself sat about 4' away from the system
being diagnosed. I still can't figure out how you manage the signaling. ;-)
In current modern systems, the high speeds are at the memory interface DDR3/4,
PCIe, SATA. All of these are running at giga-tranfers per second. We won't even
get into the proprietary interconnects between the north (CPU, graphics, memory
controller) and the south (everything else) chips.
TTFN - Guy
I just realized something, about the flashing
LEDs..
They're not just flashing, I think the thing is +running+ or at least
counting. It's counting up through the entire 16-bit address space, and
If you want test equipment suitable to work on modern computers (anything from
the mid-1990s and later), you're talking Really Big Bucks (tm). IMNSHO,
it's not even worth wasting time trying to do any hardware repair on newer
stuff, since they aren't designed to be serviced. The manufacturer intends
the whole computer to be a single FRU (Field Replaceable Unit), i.e., when
it breaks, throw it away and buy a new one. :-(
OK, so I exaggerate slightly. Usually the power supply, disk drive, keyboard,
mouse, and monitor are still separate FRUs.