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Re: low power PC



on Thu, Aug 16, 2001 at 06:36:33PM -0700, Miaoling Chiu (chiu_miaoling@yahoo.com) wrote:
> 
> >"slow" I mean *slow*, in my case it?s a Pentium 166 *down*clocked to
> >50 MHz (25 MHZ PCI-clock * 2). There is no such thing as "hardware
> >acceleration" in "slow" machines...
> >
> >For passive cooling, right? I considered to tune my old machine too -
> >K6-2-400, downclocked to 166Mhz or so, no harddisks, low-powered
> >cooler where possible... would be nice for my ears.
> >
> >The reason here is that the box runs 24/7/365 and it?s on my
> >electric-power-bill. Not to mention that I don?t need any other
> >heating in winter in that room (and winter ?round here means down to
> >-15 - -25 degC).
> 
> I am also very interested in finding a way to run a PC on minimal
> power. As the above folks mentioned, I want to put a server online 24
> hours and keep the box cool and keep the electric bills low.
> 
> I understand how to do downclocking by resetting jumpers. And I could
> install a LCD monitor, or just turn the monitor off when I'm away from
> the machine. What I don't understand though is how to power down a
> hard disk (or how to install without a hard disk). I've heard of
> people running Linux off a CD, floppy, zip or a ram disk, but seems to
> me like if would have to be a very minimalist system, and I don't know
> how you could run a server that way. But I'm open to any suggestion
> about how to cut power consumption to the bone. Any ideas? I don't
> need a very powerful server, but it should be capable of running
> Apache and Postfix all day - if that can be done without a hard disk,
> I'd appreciate some suggestions on how to set it up.

What's your definition of "PC"?

There are any number of low-power systems out there.  A laptop's not a
bad choice, most components are designed for efficience (at a cost in
speed and price).  There are also systems based on chips, notably ARM,
which are very-low power.  The early Cobalt Cube, Netwinder (I think),
and a neat toy I saw at a friend's house:  a 3" aluminum cube with
power, ethernet, serial, and USB taps.  It can be run off a battery,
otherwise uses a 12 volt power supply.  The wall wart's bigger than the
system.  For normal ranges of economy, older Intel HW is less
power-hungry than newer stuff.

For storage, flash or whatever IBM's new 1-2GB disk-on-a-stick things
are called.

Otherwise, look at tset, xset, hdparm, and apm.

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