GPFs, IDE controllers, and POP3

[DJFuji]

1.) Does anyone know what happens during an invalid page fault, general production fault, etc? All i know is that its a BAD thing.

2.) Will PC100 Ram work at 133FSB?

3.) Is an add-on controller a TRUE addition of a primary and secondary IDE controller or is it "simlulated" somehow? In other words, is there any difference at all to an add-on controller and an on-board controller?

4.) My understanding is that the IDE controller can only access one device per channel (either Master or slave). Does this mean that if you got a addon controller card that you could have 8 devices on the system and truly access four devices simultaneously? Or is there some catch to it....

5.) will an add on controller take up 1 IRQ or 2?

6.) Is there anyway to access pop3 email while traveling w/o a pop3 program? i.e. a website that will access your email for you?

7.) When you use system commander or bootmagic to use more than one OS at a time, do the two OSes have to reside on separate partitions? If they do, does that mean you have to install all software to both partitions so each OS can use it?

8.) My pixels are converging due to negative ion density. Is that a software or hardware problem? *edited* (i'm joking, guys)

thanks

 

[Mday]

1.) Does anyone know what happens during an invalid page fault, general production fault, etc? All i know is that its a BAD thing.

an error somewhere has occured. bad code or unstable system. or you are running windows (which means both )

2.) Will PC100 Ram work at 133FSB?

depends on the chips. PC100 has a buffer of 125MHz just as PC66 has a buffer of 100MHz, the buffer refers to MHz rating it has. so your PC100 should effectively run at 125MHz, meaning something along the lines of a pseudo pc125. high quality RAM will actually run at 133, with a label of PC100.

also, most PC133 RAM may not actually be PC133, as PC133 requires stuffs beyond just the 133MHz. some PC133 labeled RAM is actually PC100 that can run fine at speeds along the lines of 133MHz. this of course means nothing, as it works just fine.

3.) Is an add-on controller a TRUE addition of a primary and secondary IDE controller or is it "simlulated" somehow? In other words, is there any difference at all to an add-on controller and an on-board controller?
4.) My understanding is that the IDE controller can only access one device per channel (either primary or secondary). Does this mean that if you got a addon controller card that you could have 8 devices on the system and truly access four devices simultaneously? Or is there some catch to it....

on an IDE channel, there can be a master and slave. ONLY one of the drives on the channel can be used at any given time, hence reduced performance when operating between the master and slave of a channel, while optimized data transfer would mean 2 drives on different channels. the extra controller does not change the nature of IDE, well actually ATA architecture.

the add-on controller can mean two things, it can REPLACE your onboard controller or ADD-ON to the onboard controller. BOTH depend on the motherboard (BIOS setting) and controller. of course for the most part expect the latter.

I have mine as add-on. which means up to 8 iDE drives.

The difference is that there is another controller to "control" more drives. the similarity is that there is JUST another controller. it's nothing special, just convenient.

5.) will an add on controller take up 1 IRQ or 2?

ONE, for ALL 4 IDE drives. cool huh. technically, this means you can have 6 IDE devices without using an extra IRQ since the mobo uses 2 IRQs.

This goes for both the highpoint and promise controllers.

6.) Is there anyway to access pop3 email while traveling w/o a pop3 program? i.e. a website that will access your email for you?

nothing i know of that is free.

7.) When you use system commander or bootmagic to use more than one OS at a time, do the two OSes have to reside on separate partitions? If they do, does that mean you have to install all software to both partitions so each OS can use it?

when using MORE THAN ONE OS that are different, they HAVE to reside on at least different partitions. if Linux, i recommend another HDD, but then I don't have any experience with Linux, yet.

of course this is a no brainer if running DOS and win9x.

8.) My pixels are converging due to negative ion density. Is that a software or hardware problem?

i have never heard of this. sounds like hardware since the name says ION density. and since when are ions digital (software).

 

[DJFuji]

hey thanks for the response mday. When you said an add-on is just another "controller" does that mean you have FOUR IDE channels instead of the usual two? So that means you could have four hard drives operating as master and all transferring data simultaneously? Or does it mean that there is still two channels and each channel can support 4 devices?

In response to the separate partitions, that means if i wanted to run ms office on a win98 and win NT dual boot machine, I'd have to install it on both partitions? doh....

Sorry, question #8 was a joke...hence the happy face

 

[reality bites]

6.) Is there anyway to access pop3 email while traveling w/o a pop3 program? i.e. a website that will access your email for you?

Try http:\\www.mailstart.com

a service of hotmail, but works fairly well

 

[PowerJoe]

http://www.readmail.com

-PJ