[SGVLUG] Linux based web-server appliance

[David Lawyer]

[snip]
On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 10:03:50PM -0700, Dustin Laurence wrote:
> On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 08:57:22PM -0700, David Lawyer wrote:
> > ...Endiness is whether
> > or not you put the most significant byte first (like we do when
> > writing out a number) or put it last.
[snip]
> Hmm, I fear my mental model may not be entirely firm on this: my big
> picture is big-endian, as is English text with Hindu numerals, but I'm
> not sure but what my pointer instincts are little-endian.

Consider transmitting the number 0xABC.  If A is sent first, what does
it mean?  10, 160, 2560, etc.?  In order to decipher it you need to
scan to C and note that there are 3 hex digits.  But if C, the low order
byte is sent first (little endian) then you know what it means: just C
(12).  So little endian does make sense, even though we don't write
number that way and thus have to scan to the end of a number before
we know what the 1st digit represents.

Another trivia is what is the endiness or bits?  It doesn't matter how
they are stored in memory since the computer will always interpret
them correctly.  But it does matter for the Internet which transmits
bits in a serial manner, one at a time.  I had to do a lot of
searching to finally find out that bits are sent little endian: the
least significant bit is sent first.

> > It depends on how old.  My old 486 (held as a backup) is energy star
> > and claimed it was a "green" model and used under 30 watts, excluding
> > the monitor.
> 
> Even a Pentium or Pentium II can consume 200 W, so I'd have expected a
> 486 to consume more.

There's a page that shows how, as speeds increased from the 486 to
Pentium I to Pentium ... to Pentium IV, the power kept going up.  And
within for example Pentium I's the power went up as speed increased.

> Anyway, a NSLU2 apparently consumes less than 10 W

Amazing, but by itself it has no HD, serial port, cd, etc.  It does
have USB where you can put USB HDs.  But it's tricky to take apart
and has no screws to make disassembly easy.  On the Internet, it tells
how to take it apart so as to install a serial port.  Think I'll stick
with Pentium I :-) until NSLU2's are being given away.

			David Lawyer