Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Workstation Data Integrity
Message-ID: <2421@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 13 Aug 90 14:11:32 GMT
References: <1990Aug3.204358.330@portia.Stanford.EDU> <40694@mips.mips.COM> <2399@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1990Aug10.171744.9639@zoo.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 29

In article <1990Aug10.171744.9639@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

| But, but, but... virtually all MSDOS software *explicitly ignores*
| parity errors.  

  Please cite any software (at least from the top 20 best seller list)
which does this. We have have 800 or so PCs here running MS-DOS, PC-DOS
and at least four flavors of UNIX, and every one of them seems to see
parity errors, although most just stop dead when they do. Given an error
rate of 4-5 cases a year in that many systems, I think that's a better
thing to do than produce wrong answers. Ever.

  I have had people tell me that the Mac had better hardware because
"they don't get those stupid parity errors," but I don't even try to
explain, I just give their names to headhunters.

| People who think their MSDOS "business PCs" are somehow "protected"
| against memory errors by the parity hardware are kidding themselves.
| -- 
| It is not possible to both understand  | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
| and appreciate Intel CPUs. -D.Wolfskill|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry

  Note from the sig that Henry makes no pretension of being unbiased in
this. The PC uses an Intel processor, is the hardware can't be faulted
for not having parity, the software design must be corrupted by being
run on a CPU made by Intel.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
       "This is your PC. This is your PC on OS/2. Any questions?"