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From: slin@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Steven Philip Lin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: i486 machines
Message-ID: <19431@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 10 Nov 89 19:49:17 GMT
References: <1263@rodan.acs.syr.edu> <1418@starfish.Convergent.COM>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: slin@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Steven Philip Lin)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 26

In article <1418@starfish.Convergent.COM> jerry@starfish.Convergent.COM (Gerald Hawkins) writes:
>Even having worked at a place where it was possible to release a computer
>with a major bug known, I still don't see how you can do it!  Why would
>any customer buy a PC with a known bug?  They'll have to release some dog
>version of BIOS which looks for the killer instructions, slowing down all
>FP operations.  
>
>Comment?  Anybody from Compaq out there?  Anybody going to buy a new
>Compaq '486 machine even knowing the '486 has a floating point bug?

Well, I'm not from Compaq but I did work at Micronics a few summers ago when
386 computers were just coming out.  When the 32-bit multiplication error
was discovered in the 386 there was a big scare that everybody would stop
buying 386's.  That never happened; the purchase orders kept on coming in.
This was before Intel had announced their exchange policy (i.e. if you
have a defective chip you can trade it in when we get bug free chips), and
Intel waited two or three months after discovery of the bug before announcing
an exchange back policy.  Apparently the fascination for wanting a new product 
overcame people's reservations for buying a defective product.  The 386 was 
still fancy enough to warrant buying, bug or no bug.  Plus there was 
virtually no software out there that used 32-bit multiplication so the bug 
wasn't really all too serious.
     From what I hear at Micronics, the same thing is happening with the
486.  People still want to buy the new 486 boards, even with the buggy
chip because they know they can just exchange the 486 for a new one when Intel
ships the fixed chips.