[Floppertalk] new CPU throttling program
jleyda
floppertalk@oldskool.org
Thu, 14 Feb 2002 11:36:05 -0700
hi folks,
I've finally gotten off my butt and written a CPU throttling program that
uses hardware to slow down the machine.
The good:
a) Not a TSR - uses no memory whatsoever
b) Doesn't fiddle with timers or interrupts or reprogram any vectors.
c) absolutely no software (games) will ever mess with its settings
e) works under windows 9x, although the throttle isn't as effective because
you can't turn off L1 cache under windows.
f) appears to provide very smooth slowdowns.
g) compatible with flopper! Just run the throttle program before booting up
flopper.
Use the -N (no throttle) option on the flopper command line to disable
all of flopper's CPU throttling.
The bad:
a) only works on some mothboards created in the last 5 years or so. It uses
features only available in certain chipsets. It does support a fairly good
chunk of today's machines though. Try it and see if it works for you!
b) the amount of slowdown is either in 12.5% or 6.25% steps, depending on
the motherboard, so "fine tuning" is out.
c) extremely fast machines (933MHz or higher) still won't slow down to that
holy grail of 4.77MHz, but they do get really, really slow with this method.
A combination of this program and normal software based slowdowns is
probably the best solution.
There are 4 command line options:
-h or -? to get a help screen
-c do not turn off the L1 cache
-d debug mode. In case it locks up or everything seems to be working
properly but no slowdown takes effect.
-p dump all the PCI devices in the system. Use this for debugging in case
your machine uses a chipset that throttle doesn't know about. Send the
output to me and I'll try to see if your chipset supports throttling.
Provided your machine has a compatible chipset, you'll see a menu of
slowdown options. It should be fairly obvious how it works from there. To
change the throttling at anytime, simply re-run the program.
This program is available here:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/throttle
The current release is 0.05b. I'm looking for more testers to make sure I
haven't missed any compatible chipsets or done something silly in the code.
thanks,
-jeff!
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