Hello, I'm building a small app that gives me the free space available on my disks. I would like to add a feature displaying the status of the disk, if it is sleeping or not for example. The OS is Windows. How can this be done? The code should not have to wake the disk to find out, of course ;) A solution in C# would be nice but I gue...
Our web app's db server (running SQL Server 2008) is starting to get pounded and so I would like to upgrade it to a better box. We will still probably be going with a hosted solution. I know that the more RAM the better, but what about the processor? Is it better to have a multicore processor or one that's a little more server-oriented,...
Hello, I have lots of hard disk drives in my computer (7). When they are not used the power option send them to sleep after a while. But because everything makes a lot of noise I would like to send them to sleep when I want, not just after the default system timeout. On Windows (XP and up), preferably in C#, How can I send a disk to s...
Is there any way to determine, programmatically when headphones are plugged into the computer? Essentially, I just want to write a simple tool that will mute my sound unless headphones are plugged in. Is this even possible? ...
How much hardware understanding does one need to fully comprehend "Operating System" and "Computer Architecture" courses one takes as a computer science student? ...
I wonder if my adobe air application can communicate with external hardware's API functions. ...
We need to build a system capable of processing 40,000 messages per second. No messages can be lost in case of any software or hardware failures. Each message size is about 2-4Kb. Processing of a message consists of validating the message, doing some simple arithmetical calculations, saving result to database and (sometimes) sending no...
I've now saved a bit of money for the hardware upgrade. What I'd like to know, which is the easiest way to measure which part of hardware is the bottleneck for compiling and should be upgraded? Are there any clever techniques I could use? I've looked into perfmon, but it has too many counters and isn't very helpful without exact knowled...
How would your determine a max value to set an alarm on the I/O activity of a ubuntu/linux server hosting upto 4 sites running apache, mysql and upto 4 tomcats? Or in general (if there is one such) what is a suitable operational range for I/O read/write per second in a production server with a 7.2K SATA HDD? What I'm trying to understan...
could L1/L2 cache line each cache multiple copies of the main memory data word? ...
I want to buy a brand new notebook for out-of-the-office work. I mainly develop using VC++ (vs03) and c# (vs08) on large projects (10 gb builds). At office I've a quad core xeon with 10.000 rpm disk. What hardware, according to your experience, is the best for this kind of work in terms of price / performances / weight? ...
I'm planning to put my home server in my loft. Its just a desktop pc running linux. Aside from having to put cabling up there (which doesn't concern me) - do you think this is a bad idea? ie. Condensation when its cold or Overheating when its hot. Or even risk of fire ? ...
First Question From a C programmer's point of view, what are the differences between Intel Core processors and their AMD equivalents ? Related Second Question I think that there are some instructions that differentiate between the Intel Core from the other processors and vis-versa. How important are those instructions ? Are they being t...
Just like cars, speed is cool, but: "is speed needed? Will people to pay for it?" Word processing, email and spreadsheets are fast enough, even on underpowered netbooks (they've been fast enough for a decade.) Provided you can play HD video and sound, do people need it to be faster? It seems that games can always use more power, and i...
I've recently bought a new set-top box, and the hacker spirit beckons me to carry out things with it.. i understand there could be no standard procedure to hack it / play with it still there should so my questions are : what hardware knowledge do i need to have inorder to get a basic understanding on how a set-top box works. (any how...
Hi everyone, I have to develop a database for a unique environment. I don't have experience with database design and could use everybody's wisdom. My group is designing a database for piece of physics hardware and a data acquisition system. We need a system that will store all the hardware configuration parameters, and track the change...
I am starting to get a bit bored of programming little toys that I have been making recently, and I would love to starting programming and interacting with hardware. The only problem is that I am mostly a python guy who hasn't really learned or used any other language. Can I still interact with hardware with python? Also, what hardware...
How do you calculate memory(RAM) bandwidth used? Which performance counters are required? I came across a tool that was able to do it, the "Rightmark multi-threaded memory test". But unlike the rest of Rightmark's tests, I haven't found the source code for it, just the binaries. Thanks in Advance Tom De Bie ...
I'm looking to build a simple electronics project (with some help, I'm not a hardware kinda person) and I'd like to use .net (C#) to do the coding side of it. What I need to know is where can I get a cheap controller that I can connect via USB or serial and the suitable libraries to use for talking to it (as most System.IO.Serial docume...
Is there an API function call for this board that would allow me to generate a clock signal on an output at 500 kHz while running some other code on the board? Thanks in advance for the advices. ...