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Detailed system profiler utility or console command?

R

rEd Eye

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 28, 2001
120
0
I know that in linux you can type in a command that allows you to view cpu cycles down to the hundredth of a mhz,as well as many other nice things to know the exact realtime specs of,such as memory throughput,cache,drive read write speed etc.etc.
I find the OS9 system profiler really doesn't tell me anything,except that my cpu's run at exactly 1000mhz(ya right!).
I would like to be able to see the exact speed my frontside bus is running at,or my PCI bus.Maybe Apple slipped a couple of 950mhz chips into the ghz pile thinking no one would ever notice?How are you even supposed to know if the level 3 cache is actually there?etc.etc.
No.I'm not paranoid,just curious.Although,honestly,moving up from a G4 400,I expected my new Dual ghz G4 to have a little more "umph" than it seems to so far?
Is there any OS9 utilities,or OSX console commands/utilities and or benchmark tools used for comparing machines that can give a detailed,exact readout of these specifications?
 
R

rEd Eye

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 28, 2001
120
0
One day later......no one cares to comment,so I guess I'll just look at the product specs,nod my head and agree,blindly having faith that apple never stretches the truth at all???You know,like"ahem!"four usb ports,one of which gets used up in order to plug in the keyboard which sports two of them=three usable usb ports,unless you are ok using your computer without a keyboard,in which case you only get two usb ports.=B.S.
Dual monitor support?Sure.if you happen to have an "Apple" monitor and a VGA monitor,which is completely lame=more B.S.
80GB hard drive?Howabout 74.53GB "capacity"=+B.S.
So now I am supposed to believe that my two chips run at exactly 1000mhz?,or that the bus speed actually makes it to a whopping 133mhz?
Or that they even bothered gluing on the dummy 2meg ddram level three cache chips?
So the point is,I am asking is there or is there not a way to have the system generate an "accurate report of this type of info from within either mac os?
 
krossfyter

krossfyter

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2002
4,297
0
secret city
dont worry man....people will comment. I believe all the peeps that can help you out with this one are a sleep...like Alpha Tech, Ensign, Ambitious Lemon, Ptrauber..... etc. etc. They usually help me out a lot but I think they have a select time they are usually on. Just dont worry man. Help is on its way.

dig it!
 
M

mac15

macrumors 68040
Dec 29, 2001
3,099
0
my 10gig imac drive is 9.54 gig that bull****
and the ipod is supposed to be 5gig but its 4.7gig
that bull****
of there is an explination I'd like to know
 
Ensign Paris

Ensign Paris

macrumors 68000
Nov 4, 2001
1,781
0
Europe
I am not a Unix person (Although I do have fun with my older SGI Indigo2)

I will have a look around the net and see what I can find.

Ensign
 
Ensign Paris

Ensign Paris

macrumors 68000
Nov 4, 2001
1,781
0
Europe
Originally posted by mac15
my 10gig imac drive is 9.54 gig that bull****
and the ipod is supposed to be 5gig but its 4.7gig
that bull****
of there is an explanation I'd like to know
Click to expand...

Every hard disk is like this, the 10gb is its OPTIMUM CAPACITY and its true capacity is 10gb.

How the hell would steve say on stage, its got 512mb of RAM and a 79.53 hard disk.

DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY!
 
Gelfin

Gelfin

macrumors 68020
Sep 18, 2001
2,165
5
Denver, CO
Originally posted by Ensign Paris
Every hard disk is like this, the 10gb is its OPTIMUM CAPACITY and its true capacity is 10gb.
Click to expand...

This is only somewhat accurate. The real reason for this is a marketing game used by hard disk manufacturers for years now. Of course you know that in binary terms, kilo/mega/giga = 1,024/1,048,576/1,073,741,824. But in classical metric terms, kilo/mega/giga = 1000, one million, and one billion (even).

The HD industry didn't know which to use. The binary definition was what your computer would report to you, but the metric definition resulted in somewhat larger numbers they could print on the box. As usual in this situation, marketing interests won out over technical accuracy. If even one company does it, it's much easier for the rest to just follow suit in the name of staying competitive, rather than trying to educate consumers.

If you look in literature for hard drives, you'll typically see fine print that says something like "1GB = one billion bytes. Actual formatted capacity less." The former statement is the marketing trick. The latter statement is a bit of misdirection to avoid explaining that it's a marketing trick.

Take a ten billion byte hard disk, and divide that by 1048576 bytes per megabyte, and you get about 9540 megabytes. Take a five billion byte hard disk and do the math, and you get about a 4700 MB HD.

My guess is that the conversion from megabytes to gigabytes was hacked on top of existing code, which worked in MB exclusively because at the time the original code was working, GB drives were not available. So the later guys "fixed" it by just moving the decimal place. If you divide your HDs by the the actual number of bytes in a (binary) gigabyte (1073741824), your 10G drive is only 9.31GB, and your 5G iPod is only 4.65GB.
 
menoinjun

menoinjun

macrumors 6502a
Jul 7, 2001
567
0
I am not very versed in unix commands, but I can tell you that by typing:

uname -a

in the terminal will tell you the version of the Darwin kernel you have, and the fact that you are using PowerPC processors. Now much help huh? I am the wrong guy to ask about unix. Sorry.

-Pete
 
R

rEd Eye

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 28, 2001
120
0
Gauge Pro?

This is kinda funny.According to Gauge Pro On OS9,my system is:

Gauge PRO, version 1.1
report generated on 2/25/02 at 3:04:56 PM
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU Type: PowerPC 601 x 2
CPU Version: 2.1 [8001 0201]
CPU Temperature: not available
CPU Speed: 950.40 MHz
CPU Bus Speed: 126.72 MHz (7.5x)
System Bus Speed: 126.72 MHz
Level 1 Cache: 32K @ 950.40 MHz (32K data & inst.) (CPU)
Level 2 Cache: none
Level 3 Cache: n/a
Memory Information: 1,024 MB, Virtual Memory is Off
Memory Performance: 181.2 MB/sec moving memory (64-bit)
Memory Type: SDRAM, DIMM
Machine Information: PowerMac3,5
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
uuuuuumm....?
 
Catfish_Man

Catfish_Man

macrumors 68030
Sep 13, 2001
2,579
2
Portland, OR
type...

... sysctl -a
in terminal

also, try

vm_stat
top
sw_vers

It's a bit technical, but it should give you accurate stats. btw, the 1GHz G4 can't possibly be exactly 1000MHz because 1000 isn't a multiple of 133.
 
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