Dell 6300 Laptop User Manual


 
Introduction 1-1
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The Dell
®
PowerEdge
®
6300, which has an Intel
®
Pentium
®
II Xeon™ processor is a
feature-rich, enterprise class server that offers the highest performance, availability,
scalability, manageability, and investment protection features. The PowerEdge 6300
provides a robust, reliable, rack-optimized platform on which large corporate custom-
ers can deploy their mission critical applications.
This chapter describes the major hardware and software features of the computer
system, provides information about the indicators and controls on the system’s front
panel, and discusses connecting external devices to the system.
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The PowerEdge 6300 systems offer the following major features:
One to four Intel Pentium II Xeon microprocessors with an internal operating fre-
quency of 400 megahertz (MHz) and an external bus speed of 100 MHz.
The Pentium II Xeon microprocessor includes MMX
technology designed to
handle complex multimedia and communications software. This microprocessor
incorporates new instructions and data types as well as a technique called single
instruction, multiple data (SIMD) that allows the microprocessor to process multi-
ple data elements in parallel, thereby improving overall system performance.
A secondary (L2) cache of 512 kilobytes (KB) to 2 MB of static random-access
memory (SRAM) is included within the single-edge contact (SEC) cartridge that
contains the microprocessor. Math coprocessor functionality is internal to the
microprocessor.
Support for symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) is available by installing up to three
more Pentium II Xeon microprocessors. SMP greatly improves overall system
performance by dividing microprocessor operations among the independent
microprocessors. To take advantage of this feature, you must use an operating
system that supports multiprocessing, such as Microsoft
®
Windows NT
®
4.0 or
Novell
®
NetWare
®
4.11 (and later versions).
NOTE: If you decide to upgrade your system by installing additional micro-
processors, you must order microprocessor upgrade kits from Dell. Not all
versions of the Pentium II Xeon microprocessor will work properly as additional
microprocessors. The upgrade kit from Dell contains the correct version of the