PDA

View Full Version : Just a thought...



progbuddy
08-21-2006, 12:38 PM
I don't know why, but computer companies and makers have not thought of this yet. Why is there a need for RAM? If someone could make a better way of connecting the harddrive to the motherboard other than IDE or SATA, up the cache, and up the RPM, the RAM could be replaced with Physical memory. In the future, this idea may be put to use and refined, so that computers could operate faster and smoother.

dgrmkrp
08-21-2006, 01:18 PM
dude, just the opposite is going to happen actually.. at least that's how it seems.. as there are much closer physical limitations to hard-drive technology (eg u can't go that fast or have that much bandwidth..) future-wise, solid-state disks (made of flash.. which should be as fast as your RAM, with data-densities much larger than norma or perpendicular recording hard-drives and faster seektimes.. and random access, not sequential reads! and lots of other stuff i don't know :) ) will slowly replace them.. intel even has plans of building like a 256 meg cache in the south/north-bridge.. and vista requires (mm.. recommends i mean) hybrid disks, at least for mobile pcs.. soo... long term future, i don't know.. some years down the road.. no more platters for your main disk :) maybe...

edit: link (http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/gigabyte-iram/index.x?pg=1) very crude example

progbuddy
08-21-2006, 01:27 PM
SS disks were my next idea (lol... ironic). I also have another idea. Make harddrives A LOT smaller. They've done it with laptops, why not desktops? If you can fit 8 Gb on a static card, why not replace harddrives with smaller designs? Well, I've had this idea since iomega made winzip disks (which almost hit the spot, but didn't.). lol

dgrmkrp
08-21-2006, 01:48 PM
well... that's true.. SS disks are expensive, altough offer more.. for now, platters are best.. and they did make them smaller (perpendicular recording).. but there is a limit.. a bit in a flash/ram takes less geometric space than on a hdd.. soo.. with new technologies, the 1TB barrier is gonna be broken this year. so they say :) unfortunatelly, as long as there is a 3,5" ,2,5" and 1"(i think) standar, the manufacturers will do their best to fit as much as possible in that "small" space.. so even if they could, it is more economical to just keep the size.. of course, as modders :D we could hack an ipod or a nokia phone to get that small disk :D and use it :) long time ago, win95 time, with its slow cpus.. i was hoping that maybe they could put some memory on a device (sound card, video board, NIC) to host it's drivers.. no internet, floppy disks to hold the kit.. bad memories.. well.. we have firmware today, but just in some devices..
oh, the nearfuture/present btx standard has small sized cases (9 litres volume, i think) that should replace the common desktop computer we know.. but again, that won't affect us modders :) hihi.. we can make a small case right now.. or a huge beast of a furniture-size case ;)

just a Q: why do you want smaller harddrives? any project u need one for? ;) do tell..

Airbozo
08-21-2006, 03:36 PM
SS disks have been in use for decades. I was promoted to field engineer for Storage Tech (now owned by sun) back in '84, and the first product they trained me on was thier SS disk array.

As far as technology goes, there is no better bang for your storage buck than disks. Also it is somewhat expensive to run those SS arrays since you have to constantly provide a "refresh pulse" to keep the contents of memory _in_ memory.

Anyone remember "core" memeory? (I know I am showing my age here...) I could load a program onto a core memory board, fly to a remote location, plug the board in and execute the program (usually diagnostics). Think 64kb NON-volitile memory in a board bigger than most modern mobo's.

nil8
08-21-2006, 06:27 PM
SS has some limitations too. The one that bothers me is lifespan. Currenty SS thumbdrives can only be used about 10,000 times before they start failing.
Compare that to a decently cooled scsi drive's ability to last 20 years and you start to have problems.

Airbozo
08-21-2006, 06:52 PM
SS has some limitations too. The one that bothers me is lifespan. Currenty SS thumbdrives can only be used about 10,000 times before they start failing.
Compare that to a decently cooled scsi drive's ability to last 20 years and you start to have problems.


Well, in my experience 20 years is quite a stretch. For mission critical data I would not trust any drive beyond 5 years, for a scratch drive _maybe_ 10, but that is pushing it as well. Most drives I have dealt with have a 3 year warranty (some maxtor drives had a 5 year 100,000 MTBF), and would die within a year of the warranty expiring although at sgi we had some drives last 7 years, but if you power cycled the system, you would have to smack the drive to get it working again (about 30 in each system). These were quantum drives with known stiction problems.

progbuddy
08-21-2006, 09:08 PM
Well... thank god for BluRay. lol. Oh, I was working on a small project. I had to format a RAW hdd and install it in with another 80 Gb hdd, for a total of 160 Gb. But I do need an upgrade in RAM. I only have a sad (sniff...) 380 Mb (128 and 256 DDR), but I'm going to upgrade that. I added a cooler Master Sys fan and I plan to make my own liquid cooling system for it. Some little added things, like LEDs and firewire. I want to add some high-output ones to the small grille in the side (orange, to match the power LED). I just saw the Diablo ATX case (AWESOME!!!), and i want it (
).

Indybird
08-21-2006, 10:29 PM
I like the idea of flash hard drives...

progbuddy
08-21-2006, 11:31 PM
That reminds me...

I still have the oldest computer ever...
Micron Millenia
200 Mhz Intel Pentium Processor
Western Digital Caviar - 2.5 Gb
The oldest but coolest looking cooling system ever (before I make my own Cooling System)
16 Mb RAM (upgraded from 8)
Windows 95
Dust
Original Cost - $2000

Airbozo
08-22-2006, 11:33 AM
SS has some limitations too. The one that bothers me is lifespan. Currenty SS thumbdrives can only be used about 10,000 times before they start failing.
Compare that to a decently cooled scsi drive's ability to last 20 years and you start to have problems.


Ok just for kicks, I wanted to try the 20 year theory on the scsi disks. Now mind you the 3 disks I have have not been plugged in and powered on for about 7 or more years and they are over 15 years old. All three are seagate 250 MB disks that at one time did have data on them (used to run one of my computers on them). I had to dig out an old adaptec controller, but surprise suprise it was an ISA card and my systems at home have no isa bus, so I took all of it to work to see what I could find. Put together a pentium 3 500MHZ system and booted into linux from and ide drive. Right away one of the drives was obviously bad (drives aren't supposed to scream until I torture them!), so one down. I was actually able to read data from the other two drives without any problems. I came in today only to find one of the working drives failed (started screaming too), but the other one seems to be happy. I am going to leave it running until the end of the week to see if it makes it.

Conclusion: One working drive out of three is not bad. I do contribute the other two failures to the fact that none of those drives has been handled well over the last decade and not normal equipment failure. Still I was pleased to find that I could at least spin them up and get data off them before a major failure. Not sure how long they would survive constantly running, but hey they did run for about 8 years before I mothballed them.

progbuddy
08-22-2006, 03:05 PM
Put together a pentium 3 500MHZ system and booted into linux from and ide drive.

lol
I only had 200 Mhz from an original Pentium, but it ran 95, so it was fast because the graphics didnt take up much.

chedabob
08-22-2006, 03:23 PM
you can get RAM hard drives, but i doubt it works both ways. hard drives just aren't fast enough. its not the transfer thats the bottle neck, its the actual drive. besides, why would you want 250gb+ of ram? 1gb of ram is enough for most. nothing will need that much ram for years yet, and by that time, RAM will have come down a lot, so a 64gb stick of ram is the price of a 1gb stick now. damn that felt weird typin "64gb stick of ram".

Airbozo
08-22-2006, 04:24 PM
...hard drives just aren't fast enough. its not the transfer thats the bottle neck, its the actual drive....


This is the correct bisquit!

The mechanics of the drive can only move so fast. Right now the armature is the main slow spot of most drives. They can only move so fast. Greater spin speeds help, but that also assumes that the data you want is in a contiguous stream and not all over the drive (why defrag was so popular several years ago).

Also with RAM, there is a point that the more memory you stick on a stick (heh), the slower the access time will be (not at that point yet, but I am sure it will come into play when the 64gb sticks start making an appearance, or not depending an what kind of materials they are using by then).

progbuddy
08-22-2006, 05:27 PM
Yeah, scratch that. But there are some EXTREMELY small harddrives that pack a punch. I have a 4 Gb hdd that is only 3 in wide, but its not for IDE or SATA (usb). I also had another idea. Having an hdd with built-in RAM (not really the disk itself, just attached). This would save more room in the more compact cases. By the way, I'm designing my own system cooler.

Oh, anyone need a full tower case?

Airbozo
08-22-2006, 05:41 PM
Yeah, scratch that. But there are some EXTREMELY small harddrives that pack a punch. I have a 4 Gb hdd that is only 3 in wide, but its not for IDE or SATA (usb). I also had another idea. Having an hdd with built-in RAM (not really the disk itself, just attached). This would save more room in the more compact cases. By the way, I'm designing my own system cooler.

Oh, anyone need a full tower case?


That small disk could be an ide, just with a miniconnector. (they do make adapters...)

HD's do have built in ram, they just call it a cache and it works on some very interesting software algorithims to determine just what should be in the cache. I think the latest drives are shipping with a 16mb cache.

Cevinzol
08-22-2006, 05:44 PM
My first 2 computers had their O/S on EPROM chips (atari ST)
Man I miss those days.
No viruses.
Instant bootup.
I want my current machine to boot that fast.


I still have the oldest computer ever...
Not even close
I still have a working 486 DX4-120 sitting on the floor next to me.

Airbozo
08-22-2006, 05:49 PM
My first 2 computers had their O/S on EPROM chips (atari ST)
Man I miss those days.
No viruses.
Instant bootup.
I want my current machine to boot that fast.


Not even close
I still have a working 486 DX4-120 sitting on the floor next to me.


Hehe I am sure that if I could find all the parts, my vic20 would power right up...
Or that 8088 system I just took to the dump last weekend. That thing was so old the 10MB disk in it was rusted, and the 16mb of memory looked cracked. Guy at the recycling center was arguing with me that it MUST be 10gb _not_ 10MB...

silverdemon
08-22-2006, 05:49 PM
I have a Epson PX-4b, which is from 1985 if I am correct...
it works on 4 AA batteries (penlights) and does not even have a normal qwerty-keyboard (the letters are alphabetically ordered)

but actually this is not fair... because it is not a real desktop or something and I don't use it (it is still working though). Actually I can't work with it, because I don't have good ROM-chips with software...

[edit] oh yeah, I believe the processor is something like 5,75 MHz or something... I'll have to check that...
[edit2] OOPS, made a mistake there, it's only 2,45 MHz :p

progbuddy
08-22-2006, 09:19 PM
I just got a cool idea. A stained Glass computer case. Now that would be awesome.

progbuddy
08-22-2006, 10:43 PM
I reversed my cooling fan, and believe it or not, my computers way cooler than it was.

mikeroq
08-23-2006, 02:06 AM
Maybe your fan was in the wrong direction in the first place?

progbuddy
08-23-2006, 02:00 PM
I dont think it was that. Now I have two exhaust fans and no intake, but the exhaust fans work both ways. They basically pull air through the grille in the side. I think the reason it works better is because it takes less energy to pull than push and pull.

progbuddy
08-23-2006, 02:02 PM
I'm thinking of working on a glass case. Anyone got any ideas?

Airbozo
08-23-2006, 04:25 PM
I'm thinking of working on a glass case. Anyone got any ideas?


Wear gloves...


Hehe jk, try the u shaped aluminum and a bead of silicone to hold the glass.

progbuddy
08-23-2006, 06:58 PM
The case isn't entirely going to be made of glass. The frame will be aluminum (im thinking of putting coolant in it as a neat way of cooling the PC), and it will have screws (watertight) put into the frame to hold the glass (im going to make sure its watertight with epoxy, caulk, silicone, etc.), and have the fan holes cut out of the top (heat rises, so why not?), on the side with the motherboard (the underside of the motherboard will have plenty of breathable space, another "why not?") and of course, the back (oversized 250 mm fan). Im thinking it will run ATI 9000 pro, have a Celeron processor (cheapnessisms), and a couple cool blue LEDs in the side and in the fans.