re: installing slackware on a very fast machine

re: installing slackware on a very fast machine

[Jude DaShiell]

I can try installing slackware on a couple old laptops.  My reason for 
being interested to put it on the amd at all is because I have an 80GB 
sata hard drive and figured slackware would be ideal for that drive.  I 
can I think put archlinux on the 80GB drive too, but wanted to install 
slackware since I've used slackware for a long time.  My location changed 
from Southern Maryland to Pennsylvania and in that moving process some of 
my hard drives took some damage.  One of them died shrotly after arriving 
and it was 18 months out of warranty.  So slackware is now no longer 
usable for tower computers if you're using speakup.  I read an article on 
the web about installing emacspeak as a turnkey system and tried it with 
no good results.  Slackware doesn't beep when the boot prompt comes up by 
default and my monitors all got donated to a charity as a result of the 
move.  Slackware of course has no system with a working espeak either.  If 
I get a monitor for this computer, I can get some help with timing between 
computer startup and when the boot prompt hits the screen but that hasn't 
happened yet.



jude <jdashiel@shellworld.net>

Re: installing slackware on a very fast machine

[John G. Heim]

Does slack have a grup-update command? On debian & ubuntu that reads 
/etc/default/grub and if you define a GRUB_INIT_TUNE in there you get 
music, or at least a beep, at boot. The GRUB_INIT_TUNE setting is 
converted to parameters for the play directive in the grub config file. 
On a debian system, you don't want to edit the grub config file directly 
but you could if you had to. I have no idea how slackware handles all this.

One thing about this whole discussion that has been bothering me though. 
A fast system should not result in fast speech. Seriously, I've run 
speakup on small super computers. I guarantee I've run it on machines 
faster than you have in your home. I don't think the speech rate has 
anything to do with the speed of the computer. Maybe a little. Like the 
response time for key echo is determined by the speed of the computer.  
But the speech itself is not effected.

On 6/28/2014 2:40 PM, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> I can try installing slackware on a couple old laptops.  My reason for
> being interested to put it on the amd at all is because I have an 80GB
> sata hard drive and figured slackware would be ideal for that drive.  I
> can I think put archlinux on the 80GB drive too, but wanted to install
> slackware since I've used slackware for a long time.  My location changed
> from Southern Maryland to Pennsylvania and in that moving process some of
> my hard drives took some damage.  One of them died shrotly after arriving
> and it was 18 months out of warranty.  So slackware is now no longer
> usable for tower computers if you're using speakup.  I read an article on
> the web about installing emacspeak as a turnkey system and tried it with
> no good results.  Slackware doesn't beep when the boot prompt comes up by
> default and my monitors all got donated to a charity as a result of the
> move.  Slackware of course has no system with a working espeak either.  If
> I get a monitor for this computer, I can get some help with timing between
> computer startup and when the boot prompt hits the screen but that hasn't
> happened yet.
>
>
>
> jude <jdashiel@shellworld.net>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: installing slackware on a very fast machine

[Doug Smith]

Is there any way to go about getting one of those kinds of machines you say you have run speakup on?  Does any local computer store sell them or can 
they order them and can you get them for the same price range as, for example, a high-end customized pc? 



Thanks. 




-- 
Doug Smith: Special Agent
S.W.A.T  Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.

Re: installing slackware on a very fast machine

[John G. Heim]

Are you asking how you'd go about buying a small super computer? Well, 
it's easy enough to order them on the Dell web site. But be prepared to 
pay around $10,000.

I don't own these small super computers. They belong to the Math 
department at the University of Wisconsin where I work. We have a couple 
of 32 core machines and one 48 core cluster. But speakup doesn't run 
that much faster because it's not parallelized -- meaning it  isn't 
coded to run on multiple processors.

The linux kernel does parallelization itself so speakup can run faster 
on a fast machine. But I think you'd mostly notice the response time. 
And if playing sounds is faster, that's probably a bug in the sound 
driver. I mean, if you have a processor with a faster clock speed, you 
don't want music to come out speeded up. That'd be weird.

On 6/28/2014 9:37 PM, Doug Smith wrote:
>
> Is there any way to go about getting one of those kinds of machines you say you have run speakup on?  Does any local computer store sell them or can
> they order them and can you get them for the same price range as, for example, a high-end customized pc?
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>

Re: installing slackware on a very fast machine

[Doug Smith]

Ok, that is what I was wondering about.  I will try to eventually save up some money and get one of these when I can start working again.  

I have a few questions about these machines, though, are they air or liquid cooled?  How much room do they take up?  Are they any harder to maintain 
hardware wise than any other machine?  I guess they do have sound cards on them.  What Linux distribution runs best on one of these?  and do they have 
any problems with any kind of secure boot or whatever the members of these lists have had problems with?  

Also, if they are wanting to upgrade and will be getting rid of one of those, how much would it cost to just have them ship it over here?  



Thanks. 




-- 
Doug Smith: Special Agent
S.W.A.T  Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.

small super computer (was: slackware)

[John G. Heim]

It's funny you should bring this up because we are planning to send two 
machines with 16 core AMD processors  to the UW surplus store very soon. 
  You could probably pick one of them up for practically nothing. The 
problem is that these are rack mount machines. They are about a meter 
deep by about half a meter wide. Some people describe them as pizza 
boxes but they wouldn't describe these machines this way. These 16 core 
machines are 4 units high. A "unit" is about 4 centemeters. So they're 
about 16 cm high. Our  32 core machines are just 1 unit high. Anyway, 
the point is that nobody is going to want one of these rack mounted 
machines, especially one that has a 16 core AMD processor.

What do yu need a small super computer for? Depending on what you are 
going to do with it, you could pick up some old clunker, like the 
machines I describe above, for next to nothing. On the other hand, it's 
not good for much either. And it would be a pita to have a rack mounted 
machine in your home.

Coincidentally, I put together specs for a hex-core AMD machine for the 
International Association of Visually Impaired Technologists. I got a 
donated case but I picked out the 6-core processor, a Gigait brand 
motherboard, 16Gb of ram, and a 2Tb disk for a total of $410 on 
newegg.com. But I had a budgetary restriction of $415. If I had just a 
little more money, like $600, I think i'd go with a oct-core I7. and an 
Asus mobo. You can probably put together a dual oct-core machine with 32 
Gb of ram for under a thousand. That would give you 16 cores. What are 
you doing that 16 coes isn't enough?







On 06/29/14 11:57, Doug Smith wrote:
>
>
> Ok, that is what I was wondering about.  I will try to eventually save up some money and get one of these when I can start working again.
>
> I have a few questions about these machines, though, are they air or liquid cooled?  How much room do they take up?  Are they any harder to maintain
> hardware wise than any other machine?  I guess they do have sound cards on them.  What Linux distribution runs best on one of these?  and do they have
> any problems with any kind of secure boot or whatever the members of these lists have had problems with?
>
> Also, if they are wanting to upgrade and will be getting rid of one of those, how much would it cost to just have them ship it over here?
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: small super computer (was: slackware)

[Doug Smith]

Ok, what I am wanting to do.  research have you seen something like Commander Data, RoboCop, the computer on the Star Trek ship which can understand 
speech in a conversational way as though we were carrying on a conversation together; intelligent machines to do some of the work around our assisted 
living facility that causes problems for the staff, those kinds of things.  If I can get some concept of the software going and have someone to build 
the hardware, this or any time could be a lot of fun.  Well, my friend, welcome to Future World as far as I am concerned.  

The reason I want something like that is because I know that the hardware used in these experiments would have to be really really fast and as many 
cpu cycles as possible would be a good thing.  I am just looking for something more powerful than the average for a research platform.  



Thanks. 




-- 
Doug Smith: Special Agent
S.W.A.T  Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.

Re: small super computer

[John G. Heim]

I would be willing to bet your house (not mine) that you don't need a 
super computer for that. It would be really embarassing to me if I lost 
your house in a bet.  But I'm not so certain that I'd be willing to bet 
my house.

For sure though, you should start small. You would need to develop the 
AI program first and that is going to be like 90% of it. By the time you 
get that done, we will all have computers with 32 cores on our desktops.

I actually started working on an app to throw dice for me when I'm 
playing D&D. I never made much progress. But there are open source 
speech recognition systems out there. All I wanted to do was to be able 
to say something like, "Roll d20" and have it generate a randome integer 
  between 1 and 20 inclusive.  And if I said "Roll d8x4," it would roll 
4 random integers between 1 and 8 inclusive and give me the total. Easy.




On 06/30/14 12:26, Doug Smith wrote:
>
>
> Ok, what I am wanting to do.  research have you seen something like Commander Data, RoboCop, the computer on the Star Trek ship which can understand
> speech in a conversational way as though we were carrying on a conversation together; intelligent machines to do some of the work around our assisted
> living facility that causes problems for the staff, those kinds of things.  If I can get some concept of the software going and have someone to build
> the hardware, this or any time could be a lot of fun.  Well, my friend, welcome to Future World as far as I am concerned.
>
> The reason I want something like that is because I know that the hardware used in these experiments would have to be really really fast and as many
> cpu cycles as possible would be a good thing.  I am just looking for something more powerful than the average for a research platform.
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: small super computer (was: slackware)

[Trevor Astrope]

The fans in these machines are real howlers, so you will need somewhere to 
put it where you can't hear the noise. It will still make too much noise 
in a closet, not to mention the lack of ventillation. They really require 
a data center where they belong.

On Mon, 30 Jun 2014, John G. Heim wrote:

> It's funny you should bring this up because we are planning to send two 
> machines with 16 core AMD processors  to the UW surplus store very soon.  You 
> could probably pick one of them up for practically nothing. The problem is 
> that these are rack mount machines. They are about a meter deep by about half 
> a meter wide. Some people describe them as pizza boxes but they wouldn't 
> describe these machines this way. These 16 core machines are 4 units high. A 
> "unit" is about 4 centemeters. So they're about 16 cm high. Our  32 core 
> machines are just 1 unit high. Anyway, the point is that nobody is going to 
> want one of these rack mounted machines, especially one that has a 16 core 
> AMD processor.
>
> What do yu need a small super computer for? Depending on what you are going 
> to do with it, you could pick up some old clunker, like the machines I 
> describe above, for next to nothing. On the other hand, it's not good for 
> much either. And it would be a pita to have a rack mounted machine in your 
> home.
>
> Coincidentally, I put together specs for a hex-core AMD machine for the 
> International Association of Visually Impaired Technologists. I got a donated 
> case but I picked out the 6-core processor, a Gigait brand motherboard, 16Gb 
> of ram, and a 2Tb disk for a total of $410 on newegg.com. But I had a 
> budgetary restriction of $415. If I had just a little more money, like $600, 
> I think i'd go with a oct-core I7. and an Asus mobo. You can probably put 
> together a dual oct-core machine with 32 Gb of ram for under a thousand. That 
> would give you 16 cores. What are you doing that 16 coes isn't enough?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 06/29/14 11:57, Doug Smith wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Ok, that is what I was wondering about.  I will try to eventually save up 
>> some money and get one of these when I can start working again.
>> 
>> I have a few questions about these machines, though, are they air or liquid 
>> cooled?  How much room do they take up?  Are they any harder to maintain
>> hardware wise than any other machine?  I guess they do have sound cards on 
>> them.  What Linux distribution runs best on one of these?  and do they have
>> any problems with any kind of secure boot or whatever the members of these 
>> lists have had problems with?
>> 
>> Also, if they are wanting to upgrade and will be getting rid of one of 
>> those, how much would it cost to just have them ship it over here?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>
> -- 
> ---
> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: small super computer

[John G. Heim]

Well, there is one advantage of having them right in your office. One 
time I got caught in a thunderstorm on my way into the office and I was 
able to dry my shoes and socks by putting them in front of these very 
same computers. I should have gotten a pic of that.

Yeah, they are loud all right. And very hot. I had them in my office for 
several weeks at one point while they were being transferred from one 
server room to another. I had a fan blowing on them most of the time so 
there was that noise on top of the noise from the machines themselves. 
When they get sent to the surplus store, I'll post a link here just for 
giggles.

PS: We lost the keys so the doors are held shut with velcro.
On 6/30/2014 9:43 PM, Trevor Astrope wrote:
> The fans in these machines are real howlers, so you will need 
> somewhere to put it where you can't hear the noise. It will still make 
> too much noise in a closet, not to mention the lack of ventillation. 
> They really require a data center where they belong.
>
> On Mon, 30 Jun 2014, John G. Heim wrote:
>
>> It's funny you should bring this up because we are planning to send 
>> two machines with 16 core AMD processors  to the UW surplus store 
>> very soon.  You could probably pick one of them up for practically 
>> nothing. The problem is that these are rack mount machines. They are 
>> about a meter deep by about half a meter wide. Some people describe 
>> them as pizza boxes but they wouldn't describe these machines this 
>> way. These 16 core machines are 4 units high. A "unit" is about 4 
>> centemeters. So they're about 16 cm high. Our  32 core machines are 
>> just 1 unit high. Anyway, the point is that nobody is going to want 
>> one of these rack mounted machines, especially one that has a 16 core 
>> AMD processor.
>>
>> What do yu need a small super computer for? Depending on what you are 
>> going to do with it, you could pick up some old clunker, like the 
>> machines I describe above, for next to nothing. On the other hand, 
>> it's not good for much either. And it would be a pita to have a rack 
>> mounted machine in your home.
>>
>> Coincidentally, I put together specs for a hex-core AMD machine for 
>> the International Association of Visually Impaired Technologists. I 
>> got a donated case but I picked out the 6-core processor, a Gigait 
>> brand motherboard, 16Gb of ram, and a 2Tb disk for a total of $410 on 
>> newegg.com. But I had a budgetary restriction of $415. If I had just 
>> a little more money, like $600, I think i'd go with a oct-core I7. 
>> and an Asus mobo. You can probably put together a dual oct-core 
>> machine with 32 Gb of ram for under a thousand. That would give you 
>> 16 cores. What are you doing that 16 coes isn't enough?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 06/29/14 11:57, Doug Smith wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Ok, that is what I was wondering about.  I will try to eventually 
>>> save up some money and get one of these when I can start working again.
>>>
>>> I have a few questions about these machines, though, are they air or 
>>> liquid cooled?  How much room do they take up?  Are they any harder 
>>> to maintain
>>> hardware wise than any other machine?  I guess they do have sound 
>>> cards on them.  What Linux distribution runs best on one of these?  
>>> and do they have
>>> any problems with any kind of secure boot or whatever the members of 
>>> these lists have had problems with?
>>>
>>> Also, if they are wanting to upgrade and will be getting rid of one 
>>> of those, how much would it cost to just have them ship it over here?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> -- 
>> ---
>> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: small super computer

[Doug Smith]

Well, thank you for the info.  I was just wondering because I was looking for a great research platform.  I was probably going to put talking arch or 
something on there and see what I could find to get into.  You're right.  We have just a room here and it is shared by 2 people.  Imagine the 
consternation when my roommate would have heard that thing start up.  

The loudest computer room I have ever been was the time I was at Western Carolina University and we went into the mainframe room to see what all the 
campus was using at the  time.  

There were VAX-8500's, two of them, daisy wheel or some kind of loud line printers, 3 of them, and terminal controllers with fans on them, I am not 
sure if it was 2 or 3 of those.  Those fans were real howlers as well.  With all that going at the same time and one of the fans shaking the floor as 
it turned, probably because it was out of balance, it sounded like you were in the engine room of a sovereign class starship.  I wish I had had a 
recorder.  You wouldn't have believed the noise.  I was barely able to hear the person telling me about all the things in there and saying "Don't 
touch any of these controls."

Thanks for all the info.  I have always been interested in supercomputers and have wanted one for a research platform and keep this for my system to 
do other work on.  This is really an interesting discussion and that was good thinking to get your shoes and socks dried out.  




-- 
Doug Smith: Special Agent
S.W.A.T  Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.

Re: small super computer

[Trevor Astrope]

You might want to consider using a cloud. You can get free access to 
Amazon's AWS cloud for a year, allbeit with limited resources. It will 
also allow you to scale up on demand. It can get expensive, but it would 
be useful for sizing your hardware requirements to help you determine how 
much hardware you need if you choose to manage it on your own.

Also, many employers now are looking for people with AWS experience, so 
learning AWS may help with your career.

Good luck,

Trevor

On Tue, 1 Jul 2014, Doug Smith wrote:

>
>
> Well, thank you for the info.  I was just wondering because I was looking for a great research platform.  I was probably going to put talking arch or
> something on there and see what I could find to get into.  You're right.  We have just a room here and it is shared by 2 people.  Imagine the
> consternation when my roommate would have heard that thing start up.
>
> The loudest computer room I have ever been was the time I was at Western Carolina University and we went into the mainframe room to see what all the
> campus was using at the  time.
>
> There were VAX-8500's, two of them, daisy wheel or some kind of loud line printers, 3 of them, and terminal controllers with fans on them, I am not
> sure if it was 2 or 3 of those.  Those fans were real howlers as well.  With all that going at the same time and one of the fans shaking the floor as
> it turned, probably because it was out of balance, it sounded like you were in the engine room of a sovereign class starship.  I wish I had had a
> recorder.  You wouldn't have believed the noise.  I was barely able to hear the person telling me about all the things in there and saying "Don't
> touch any of these controls."
>
> Thanks for all the info.  I have always been interested in supercomputers and have wanted one for a research platform and keep this for my system to
> do other work on.  This is really an interesting discussion and that was good thinking to get your shoes and socks dried out.
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Doug Smith: Special Agent
> S.W.A.T  Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
> Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: small super computer

[Doug Smith]

That's a good idea.  I wonder if they are using something similar to what we've been talking about to make up their cloud.  

I might have to look into this in the future and that would be good to have that experience.  



Thanks. 




-- 
Doug Smith: Special Agent
S.W.A.T  Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.

Re: small super computer

[John G. Heim]

Cloud computeing is good for high throughput computing. It is not good 
for high performance computing.  The difference is response time. If you 
have a process that is going to take eleventy gazillion CPU cycles  and 
you need the answer in an hour, you can use cloud computing. But if you 
are running aprocess that takes only one gazillion cpu cycles but you 
need the answer now, that's high performance computing.  As I said, I 
don't believe you need super computing at all for what you want to do 
but if you did, it'd be high performance computing. Something like a 
game requires high performance computing. Something like DNA sequencing 
requires high throughput computing. You thing is more like a game than 
like gne sequencing.


If you use cloud computing, you're going to ask your machine a question 
and then it would send the question out to the cloud over your slow 
ethernet connection, and I don't care how fast your network connection 
is, it's still slow comppared to the speed of the bus inside a computer. 
Then you have to sit there and wait for the answer.

The small super computers we have wher (32 cores) don't have a cluster 
connection at all. If you want to run your process on more than 32 cores 
at a time you can't do it. But most super computers are made up f dozens 
of nodes and they are clustered together with a very, very fast 
ethernet.  You can do high throughput computing on a slow ethernet 
cluster but you can't do high performance computing.




On 07/01/14 11:48, Doug Smith wrote:
>
>
> That's a good idea.  I wonder if they are using something similar to what we've been talking about to make up their cloud.
>
> I might have to look into this in the future and that would be good to have that experience.
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu