New computers are HORRIBLE...

[Kellemora]

Well, got my new computer. It's sitting over on the other desk, unusable for now.

I spent several hours just trying to figure out how to partition the hard drives.
The latest GParted would not load. Ubuntu would not load, Linux Mint would not load, Debian would not load. To use the GParted programs built into them.
Secure Boot is TURNED OFF AND DISABLED, the computer guy did that because he knew I would not be installing Doze8.1 on it.

After several hours I finally found a version of GParted written for this lousy new architecture.
It has No BIOS, it has No IDE, and if I went with the CPU I was supposed to get, it would have No Graphics either. It's UEFI, SATA4, Military Class 4 - A type computer.
Sound great until you realize, no existing OSs will work on it.
No moving your hard drive over to it, not even a SATA drive, because the architecture is different.

This means, IF I can find the right installers for the OSs, which I haven't yet, I will have to reload everything from scratch.
I'm sure it will be a great machine IF I can ever get it working.

I've been looking for a version of Virtual Box or Virtual Machine, so I can run something on it, but they both require and underlying OS first. I have downloaded the OSs, burned them to DVDs, checked the MD5SUM, but none will boot up, cannot find, cannot find, cannot find, this that or the other thing.

If I have time tomorrow, the computer builder can install Linux Mint Mate on it from a dealer install disk for me. Now that I finally managed to get it partitioned the way I want.
It looks like I won't be able to clone a copy of WindowsXP to it though. We'll see...

Not a happy camper at the moment.

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

That's a scary story Gary. :shock:

The only difference between what you have and what I have been using for a while now is SATA4 and the military grading. UEFI is built into my mobo firmware if I want to use it, which I don't. Thus I am able to multi-boot Linux and Windows from the internal drives, from a live CD, and/or memory stick all via BIOS. I can't imagine what you have there that will not allow you to install the OS of your choice. But, I'm thinking it can be fixed in settings for whatever the equivalent to BIOS is in your system.

On the two occasions that I hired somebody to build computers for me, I had them install the operating systems of my choice before I accepted delivery. That was my way of assuring that the systems will (in theory) do what I want them to do.

I think you will like MATE if it can be installed on your hardware. It's reminiscent of the good old days with the option to switch over to 2014 (Ubuntu LTS) at the click of a button during the login process.

[Kellemora]

Hi Yogi

I took it back to the dealer, he will swap out the msi motherboard for an Asus board for me. Will take about two weeks for him to order one and get the work done.

Turns out, I'm not the only one with the problem. No Kernel higher than 3.13 will work on msi brand motherboards, especially the A series. They have dedicated themselves to Windows ONLY now.

Although, that being said, I can install older Distro's to it with no problem, provided the Kernel is the 2.xx range.
But then you cannot get things like Google Chrome or Firefox to run on them, unless you have an old version handy.

I spent a couple of hours at the computer store, he tried something to see if it would work.
He installed Puppy Linux as the OS, and then installed Virtual Box to install the new Distro's. This did not work either, and even he stumped as to why, since he could set it to legacy and other things.

After a phone call to msi, he finally agreed to swap mother boards for me, no charge.
Plus he sold me a used Dell machine marked 350 bucks from 150 bucks so I had something.
Got it home to find it has no place other than USB ports to plug keyboard and mouse into.
I have TONS of the wrong adapters, USB to keyboard/mouse ports, but no keyboard or mouse plugs to USB.
My newer keyboards and meeces have USB plugs on them, but my KVM switches all have standard keyboard/mouse plugs.

Didn't you say you run everything in VM or VB now?
I'm thinking perhaps that's the way I should go also.
Although with GPT, I can have up to 128 partitions. I only need less than a dozen to do everything I like to do.
It just requires rebooting, where VB would save the trouble of rebooting.

Oh well, I have a Dell to play with and get loaded up. before this one goes south.

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

Something does not sound right Gary.

I'm currently using an MSI BB75MA-E33 motherboard (bought off the shelf at Best Buy) and am multi-booting with Ubuntu 14.04 being one of the OS's. The current kernel for this distro is 3.13.0-35. I've booted debian from a USB memory stick with this mobo, and various other flavors of Linux from live CD's. And, of course, Windows in two different flavors also is installed.

In my case I deliberately chose to have separate HDD/SSD for each OS. I've heard stories about the kind of problems you are experiencing, and in spite of being told everyone can live happily on a single hard drive, I chose not to do it in my desktop environment. The laptop is a different story and one drive is partitioned for several OS's, but they are all non-Windows.

My desktop, with the MSI mobo, has Virtual Box installed in the Windows 7 host. At the moment I have two virtual machines available, one of them being MATE on Ubuntu. You can save yourself a lot of money by using virtual machines instead of hardware, but you will need the RAM and processing power to support all that virtualizing. I never ran more than two VM's simultaneously and only took up slightly over 4GB RAM to do it. I have a 4 core Intel processor running @ 3.6GHz and 16GB RAM if I need it.

The biggest problem I have is with my nVidia card. It does not play well with Linux and I have to use the nVidia drivers installed from the shell to get things working. I don't think it's a problem with the motherboard, because everything works as expected in the Windows environment. It's definitely a Linux/nVidia incompatibility. I was hesitant to go with MSI at first, but now that it's been working for nearly a year I'm satisfied with it. I will be upgrading to an i7 Intel processor down the line and may have to change mobo's at that time. For now I'm happy as a clam. :lmao4:

[Kellemora]

Hi Yogi

The problem is only with the msi A series of motherboards.
I've already forgotten which graphics card it had, but it was not NVidia.

I'm sure the Asus mobo he ordered for me will be NVidia, since that is what is on all of my Asus boards.

Tried to install XP on the Dell and I guess the Dell is too new for it. I'll have to try to clone a working copy over.
Windows XP did install, but has no audio or ethernet drivers, working in generic vga mode. So maybe it's just a matter of getting the drivers. However, a new install requires registering and downloading upgrades. So I may be better off, deleting everything and starting over with a cloned drive and see what happens from there.

All three of the Linux Distro's, Debian, Mint, and Ubuntu, loaded in straight away with no problems. But Grub pulled the Distro's off the second hard drive and added them to the bootloader. I should have left the second hard drive unplugged until after I installed everything, hi hi... I will be erasing the hd that came in the machine, because even though it was wiped clean, then the OS installed, I planned on using it to hold only iso files for when my new machine gets back home.

On the Virtual Machine, my computer guy told me the same thing. I should have taken the 8 core 16 gig machine he offered me, while I had the chance. He sold to someone else. It would have run all the flavors of Linux plus VB if I wanted to.

Even if I did have VB, I don't think I would be running more than one OS at the same time.
My main goal with a new machine was to use three monitors, without having to use three different computers.
I could open the days work in Firefox from where I work, and move it up on the right screen. Open the instructions of what changes need to be made in either chrome or firefox and move it up to the left screen, then open chrome to do my work on the monitor in my desk. That way everything is in the same computer, meaning I could copy and paste on things I'm allowed to do that on. Whereas using different computers, I have to save it in a shared folder first on one computer, and go to the other computer to open the file, copy and paste. I was hoping for less work to do things.

Instead I've opened up a huge can of worms, hi hi... All these IDE drives I keep backups on, unless I take apart an old IDE external for the USB guts and plugs as an adapter. I cannot have an external IDE port and power plug like I had on the computers that got fried.

Rather than using Clonezilla to move some stuff. I was thinking of just using Terminal with the DD if/sba2 of/sbb2, I may not have written the code right, but you get what I mean. Have you ever done cloning this way?
I KNOW to make the same size partitions on the empty drive first.
My thoughts were it would be much faster, but is this an exact mirror? I know I would have to fix the MBR.

Thanks

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

I think I'm missing something about your need for Windows XP. Why do you have to keep moving it to new machines? Is it not possible to just leave it on an old computer that was built for XP? I'm sure there are plenty old ones laying around on E-Bay or such places where you can get one for a song.

The thing about virtual machines is that they act as if they were separate pieces of hardware. That means you would have to create a shared folder(s) on your host system to share files among all the virtual machines. It's all in one physical box, but virtually spread out to different places in cyber space. If you got yourself a cinema size monitor, or perhaps two, I think you can display all the information you need using virtual machines and one hardware box. I can see at least four windows fitting comfortably into a dual monitor system. The downside is that the monitors would cost more than the computer. But, you may be able to justify that by saying it's all in one box.

Backups would be from just one machine in that scenario. I'ts a big up front cost, but a big money saver over the long run. The beauty of it all is that if the hardware fries, you have your VM's stored on a backup drive and can load them into any machine that is running Virtual Box.

When I moved off the mechanical HD to the SSD, I made an image on the flash drive. I did not use Clonzilla, but did use either Acronis or EaseUS Disk Copy - I don't recall which and have since uninstalled it. Then I had to run fixmbr.exe from a Windows repair disk in order to straighten out the MBR on the cloned drive. After that I was good to go. I have GRUB stored on the Linux HD, and that can see the Windows partitions, but the default boot is from the Windows 7 drive which has no idea that Linux even exist on this machine. LOL

The Linux 'dd' command can be used to make a bit for bit copy of a partition. I've red some horror stories about how easy it is to misuse the command and thus wipe out a drive instead of copying it. That's why I decided to use commercial software for that purpose. If I were at all confident with my Linux admin skills I'd use it. 'dd' is the easiest way to go, if you dare.

[Kellemora]

Hi Yogi

I have an OLD, and I mean OLD, program that holds my families genealogy files.
I have over 120,000 individuals in this program, all linked together where they belong, along with much data about them, as you would find in a genealogy program.
It is Family Tree Maker! I started with the original DOS version and upgraded to 3.11 and later to XP.
This is the problem. I have not upgraded the program since XP, and their newer versions, even if I bought one, cannot read the original updated files started on DOS, upgraded to 3.11, then upgraded to XP.
The original files were FTM. The upgraded files are all second generation FTW now.

I installed Windows XP from an original install disk on the Dell OptiPlex745 I just bought used. But do not have any drivers yet to connect to the internet, provide sound, and am using generic VGA graphics driver.

I was thinking of just cloning a working copy of Windows XP with all the drivers and upgrades intact, then adding the necessary drivers. Even so, it will not run on the brand new machine I have back in the shop for a different motherboard.

The other problem: ALL of my OLD accounting records are in QuickBooksPro for XP, never upgraded.
Or should I say, I've upgraded QuickBooks Pro a few times, but all of my older records which are archived cannot be read on the new version either. This is why I always kept an old computer with XP not connected to the internet, and not upgraded. Everything on it worked just fine without doing so. So I left it alone.

Using these old IDE drives, I've never had a problem pulling one off the shelf and booting it in a newer computer. Trouble is, ALL of the computers I could do this with were fried by the lightning.

Since XP did install on the Dell, as I have time, I will try to get new drivers, however, now it need registered within 30 days, and all the upgrades downloaded before they expire in April.
I figured it would be easier just to clone an existing copy over to the new hard drive, and not go through all that.

I've already partitioned, added XP First on SBA1 where it likes to reside, then installed three Linux Distro's to try out. Debian worked great, as expected, Linux Mint installed and the tools work as expected. Ubuntu 14.4 is installed, then changed to flashback mode, installed Synaptic Package Manager since it was not a part of the new OS, added my two panels, but cannot find any way to add things to the desktop, like computer icon, network icon, I already have Trash on the lower Panel where I like it, but cannot find a way to put it on the desktop either. Not that I want it, but I thought if I could figure out how to do that, I could do the other things I want there too. Not that I will be using Ubuntu, I just thought I would give it a fair chance again. But it is so bad, and I've lost way to many valuable hours trying to figure it out, I think I'll just delete it. It's gone steadily downhill since version 8.04...

By the way, the Dell OptiPlex 745 does not have PS2 ports or IDE slots, which was surprising for such an old machine. I've been to several stores trying to find PS2 female to USB adapters. Nobody has them! I have dozens of USB to PS2 male adapters, because they come free with keyboards and meeces.
ALL of my KVM switches use PS2 for the keyboard and mouse connectors. So I need PS2 female to USB adapters to use them. Guess I'll check Tiger Direct and a few on-line places for them. Even Radio Shack does not stock anything over two years old. Funny though, this is the first time I've ever encountered a computer without PS2 connectors built in.

I did pick up a 2-port KVM switch with USB on the output side and PS2 on the input side, since I have enough of those adapters to make it work. One other thing. A serial port mouse adapter does not work on the Dell either. I checked it on my other computers, PS2 to Serial port and it works fine with that old mouse. Strange. My new thumball meeces all have USB connectors, so I'm OK there.

OK, don't want to waste any more of your time. Just trying to get away from installing Windows XP, although I already have. It doesn't have a simple /home file I can copy from another computer and save all the Registry stuff, hi hi... Linux is so much easier. Install, copy /home and hit update/upgrade, and you're good to go.

TTUL
Gary

[Kellemora]

FINALLY ELATED!

Picked up my computer from the dealer yesterday.
He used my old case from before, and put an ASUS F2-A85-M2 motherboard in it, and replaced the new CPU with one even newer, an AMD A4 6320 4Ghz. The one he had put on the msi mobo was only 3.72 GHz.

The hard drive partitioned just fine, and all of the OSs I wanted on it installed without a single glitch.

As far as WindowsXP, I can slip the IDE drive in an old IDE external case and boot from USB, for now.
A new install of XP cannot find the ethernet to get the drivers. Something I'll have to study.
I did find an way to make a clone of XP from an existing drive, directly into VM ware, which I may try, when I get time.

Happy as a lark with my new mobo and CPU. Have no idea why the computer guy didn't know msi A class mobo's were Windoze ONLY mobo's... The ASUS mobo does have printed on it, Windows8.1 ready. But there are no locks keeping one from installing anything else on it.

I chose not to copy my old /home directory to this new computer, so it is clean except for what I installed new, or changes in set-up I made fresh.

I did load Linux Mint Mate and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on their own partitions. Lost a few hours trying to get Ubuntu to do anything. Mint is much easier, but still missing a lot of features. So I will play with them, but keep Debian as my main OS.

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

I am happy to read that you are back to normal with a working computer system. I too would wonder why the expert gave you something you cannot use. I also am curious about the clock speed for your processor. I was under the impression that 3.72Gh is the upper limit. Are you overclocking by some chance? There would be no noticeable increase in throughput for anything you do if you are pushing the processor beyond it's intended capacity. Gamers love to do it, bit I'm certain the life expectancy of the CPU is shortened when you push it too hard.

I've been using Ubuntu and Unity so long that I find MATE to be a bit retro. The menu system is crazy and something I'd expect from Windows. I don't know about any built in features being lacking because I don't need all the things you do. MATE is fun, but I haven't found a compelling argument to switch from Ubuntu and Unity.

[Kellemora]

Hi Yogi
No, I do not, and have never overclocked any of my computers. I think that is something gamers do quite often though.

You may be right about the CPU speed. It's an AMD A4 6320.
The BOX it came in shows: 4.0 GHz Max Turbo, 3.8 GHz Base.

But running lscpu gives me a different reading.
I also just checked my other two machines and now I'm more confused than ever.
My oldest machine shows it is much faster. I'll post the lscpu from all three. Maybe you'll understand it better than I do.

My brand new machine, shows CPU MHz: 1998.000 (strange, just ran it again and it showed 1800.000)
My oldest dual core machine, shows CPU MHz: 3000.280 (how can this be?)
And the used OptiPlex745, shows CPU MHz: 1860.638

gary@AsusF2A85M2:~$ lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core: 2
Core(s) per socket: 1
Socket(s): 1
NUMA node(s): 1
Vendor ID: AuthenticAMD
CPU family: 21
Model: 19
Stepping: 1
CPU MHz: 1998.000
BogoMIPS: 7580.59
Virtualization: AMD-V
L1d cache: 16K
L1i cache: 64K
L2 cache: 1024K
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0,1
gary@AsusF2A85M2:~$

gary@Asus2AMD2Debian:~$ lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 2
Socket(s): 1
NUMA node(s): 1
Vendor ID: AuthenticAMD
CPU family: 16
Model: 6
Stepping: 2
CPU MHz: 3000.280
BogoMIPS: 6000.66
Virtualization: AMD-V
L1d cache: 64K
L1i cache: 64K
L2 cache: 1024K
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0,1
gary@Asus2AMD2Debian:~$

gary@OptiPlex745:~$ lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 2
Socket(s): 1
NUMA node(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 15
Stepping: 6
CPU MHz: 1860.638
BogoMIPS: 3721.28
Virtualization: VT-x
L1d cache: 32K
L1i cache: 32K
L2 cache: 2048K
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0,1
gary@OptiPlex745:~$

I only loaded Mint and Ubuntu to play with them. Takes me forever to do anything on either. So I'm sticking with Debian 7 for now for my daily work. FWIW: I also loaded all three on the little netbook to see how they handle on it.
I don't like the Cell Phone cluttered desktop look at all, so use the fallback or classic modes.
Saw a cartoon the other day, it showed the 1996 version of AOL for Kids screen, vs the new Windows 8 screen. They are almost identical. Cluttered and you can't get there from here!

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

I bet you thought the CPU clock speed was constant. It's not. I did a little (very little) research when I read your comments and tried to find out how 'lscpu' gets it's numbers. The man pages don't mention the fact that clock speed can be displayed. All they say is the cpu data is read from sysfs and /proc/cpuinfo. No reference is made regarding how the speed is actually measured.

I did find the following: http://askubuntu.com/questions/444965/l ... indirectly
You don't have the same problem but the answer is very interesting. There are several ways to measure your cpu and see the clock speed change in real time.

Also, you might be interested in I-nex: http://sourceforge.net/projects/i-nex/
This little utility has a wealth of information including details about your cpu.

I'd encourage you to install I-nex on your old systems with the unusually high clock speed if possible. You might be surprised at the cpu specs I-nex uncovers. If the actual clock speed measures higher than the specs, your hardware is accelerating things somewhere. If none of that is true, then the 'lscpu' simply is in error on those machines.

[kg]

Hi! I know it's been a while since I posted in this forum, but I read something I thought I might comment on:

Windows XP did install, but has no audio or ethernet drivers, working in generic vga mode. So maybe it's just a matter of getting the drivers.

Back when I first started with Linux, I was forced to reinstall XP at one point. When it was installed, I found there was no way for me to connect to the Internet; there was no driver for the Ethernet port. Fortunately, I had Linux installed. I was able to access the Internet from there, download my Ethernet drivers, then install them in XP.

Crazy, huh? With a few notable exceptions, most everything just works when you install Linux, but you need drivers for most everything when you install Windows.

You really have some problems with newer computers, don't you Gary? I have two newer computers here, and am in love with them! Quad core AMD desktop with 16 GB of RAM, and a Quad core laptop, i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM. They both run great, with no problems of note. I have Mint 17 on the desktop, and am running Windows 7 on the laptop.

BTW, I found out about the quad core i7 processor running 8 BOINC Work Units. The i7 series of processors have what is called "hyperthreading." This means that each core will process as two cores, even though there is only one physical core.

It seems that the fact that they are virtual threads makes little to no difference. The AMD processor processes 4 work units simultaneously; the i7, 8. My average on the i7 runs twice the average work units as the AMD...i.e., the "recent average credit" rating is twice the amount. I typically run just over 2000 average on the AMD, and over 4,000 on the i7.

How it does that, I have no idea, but that's what the numbers show.

[Kellemora]

Hi Yogi

I tried installing i-Nex and hit way to many dependencies not included in the .deb installer file.
When I go to get the dependencies, they are in formats I have no idea how to do them.
I thought for something to be a .deb package, it had to include everything it needed as a package?

I got to reading several other pages while I was at the sites you sent me to.

Tried a few other commands, found I do not have 'lshw' but did have 'inxi' on the new machine which gave the same readings.

Based on what I read, the clock speed is not all that important, it is how much data it can crunch during a given time frame.
The two newer machines control the CPU speed depending upon what it is doing. It idles down if not busy?
If what I read is correct, the lscpu only shows the smbios clock speed rating is all, not what it's running at when tested.
Another test can show the minimum and maximum clock speeds, but still not what it is presently running at, which on the newer machines can vary depending on the tasks it is handling.
The old computer showing 3000.280 is probably correct, if you divide by two. The cpu is rated as 3GHz. dual core. I assume that means 1.5 on each core?
I only say that because when I saw a machine considered a hi-end gamers machines, it showed the CPU as 1.86 or something like that. The guy said to multiply that times four because it's a quad core, which would make it 7.44 GHz, which as you said, is faster than the computer can run. So once again, meaningless.

I'm not going to worry about it, since they work just fine for what I do with them.

I'm just kicking myself in the butt for not taking the 8 core 16 Gig machine while I had the chance to get it for cheap.
Then one never knows, it may be a blessing I didn't get it too. If I couldn't install Linux, he wouldn't have taken that one back.

I also assume, since my CPU is rated at 4GHz on the box, it must be only 2GHz per core?

TTUL
Gary

[Kellemora]

Hi Glenn

Using my old accounting computer, I did take the time to try an experiment.
Took an old 40gig hd with XP Home on it. Booted into it and let it update itself, for the machine I plugged it into.
Internet, sound and graphics worked just fine.
Took an 80 gig drive and reformatted it, then used Clonezilla to make a mirror copy on the new drive.
It made a mirror copy OK, and set a 40gig partition for the new copy.
I had to run Boot Repair disk in order for it to boot up. But at least it worked.
Then I expanded the 40 gig partition out to 60 gigs. Still worked OK.

I tried using 'dd' to make a copy, unfortunately the 40 gig was mounted the first attempt.
So I unhooked everything, plugged the original HD back in. Added the drive with XP and the reformatted drive.
So I ran dd from the main disk, told it the if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc
I didn't realize I had partitioned the drive with XP on it and it was an 80 gig drive with a 40 gig partition for XP and dd copied the whole thing and ran out of space.

Somehow, the drive with XP on it now doesn't work either. DRAT...

Back to the drawing boards.

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

Talk about a can of worms, and you might as well be talking about clock speed of a microprocessor with multiple cores.

Q: Assume we have a 4 core processor. Each core runs at 3GHz. Does the total speed equal 12GHz?
A: Yes and no.

If you have a program that can actually address all four cores (I'll skip multiple threads for this example), the example CPU will send outputs to 4 targets. In that scenario the net throughput is equivalent to 12GHz of clocking. (4 x 3GHz = 12GHz)

However, not a lot of programs are written to use four cores of processing. Newer software certainly is, but you are running a lot of vintage apps that are written to run one process at a time in serial fashion. You get the full benefit of the 3GHz specification, but obviously not the effective throughput of 12GHz.

Because programs seldom are linear, even parallel processing will not have all channels of their output available simultaneously. Producing video may take longer than producing the accompanying audio in your media player, for example. Some cores are waiting for the others to complete their tasks. In this case a lot of those 3GHz clock cycles are doing nothing.

You may clock your processor cores at 3 GHz, but internal architecture of different chips vary. This variation affects how quickly instructions are executed. Two different processors will take a different number of clock cycles to process the same instruction. In this case a dual core might give you better throughput than a quad core.

So, you might be wondering what exactly does it mean to have 4 cores rated at 3GHz. I'm wondering too. :grin:

[Yogi]

I apologize for forgetting to give you all the information about installing I-nex. You need to have gambas3.x installed first. Ubuntu makes that clear during installation, but I forgot that you are not using that distro. :oops:

Use this bit of command line code to see your clock speed in real time:

Code: Select all

 lscpu | grep 'MHz'

[Kellemora]

I've done that one too Yogi, still get 3000.280

As you see, all of my machines are dual core.
Almost had an 8 core machine for cheap, but passed it up, DRAT...
But as you said, for what I do, the only time I see both cores truly being used, is if I'm running two separate programs at the same time.

Thanks for all the other info!

By the way, do you know what STEPPING means?

I see my newest mobo Stepping is only ONE.
My oldest machine is Stepping TWO.
And the Dell is Stepping SIX.
They all do multi-threading, so where is it stepping too and why?

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

I had to investigate "stepping" because I was not familiar with the term. It is simply a version number for the processor chip.

Making a microprocessor involves photo lithography to create the patterns for the transistors on the substrate. Each set of negatives, or mask, is called a step. Thus, when a change is made to the internal architecture, an new mask, must be made. My understanding is that defects and flaws in the etching is why they do this, as opposed to adding or changing capability.

[Kellemora]

Hmm, so then Stepping ONE would mean they got it right the first time.

I've seen some with Stepping as high as SIXTEEN.

Interesting.

Or it could mean they did it all on one layer, instead of building up layers to make the components thicker?

It really is amazing how they can build this stuff. I remember studying the simple transistor when it first came out. How it could even work was mind-boggling.
We had a lot of equipment with glass tubes, some of these tubes could be replaced with solid-state devices that simply plugged in where the tube used to be. Although this only worked in a few cases for some tubes. Much of our equipment could be rewired to make use of solid-state parts in them, often replacing a whole section of the device.
During my HeathKit building years, they had many items, since the components were built separate and then assembled, where the kit components changed quite often, and most were interchangeable. Like my GR-2000 TV needed a new tuner. The old clunky tuner, which took up a lot of space, was replaced with a single circuit board and display panel that fit the old visible by user tuner area.
Old wax an oil capacitors were replaced with electrolytics, etc. etc. etc.
Then came IC's and everything turned miniature and stamped out of a machine.
And the end of HeathKit as a kit company anyhow.

[kg]

I miss the old Heathkits. I built several of them, including a Sixer and Twoer. I also built a couple of HF radios, though I can't remember their model numbers.