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From: guscus@katzo.rice.edu (Gustavo E. Scuseria)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cdc
Subject: Re: R6000 systems, anyone?
Keywords: R6000, CDC 4680, weirdness, experience
Message-ID: <1991Jun30.224428.7715@rice.edu>
Date: 30 Jun 91 22:44:28 GMT
References: <1991Jun28.155256.24743@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> <5229@spim.mips.COM>
Sender: news@rice.edu (News)
Organization: Rice University, Houston, Texas
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In article <5229@spim.mips.COM> cprice@mips.com (Charlie Price) writes:
>In article <1991Jun28.155256.24743@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> bediger@isis.cs.du.edu writes:
>>
>>     [stuff deleted]
>>
>>We have FOUR CDC/4680 (MIPS ECL R6000) systems and all four go up and down
>>like yo-yos, have poor network performance (especially NFS -- gag!),
>>disk controller and ethernet board failures, CPU board failures, and so on
>>and on and on. 
>>     [more stuff deleted]

    My RC6280 had pretty much the same problems ...
    I was going to buy it (trading in one of my m-2000s)
    but gave up after 6 months and innumerable board exchanges.

    Charlie Price's recommendation in such a case are:
>
>
>   1) Complain, put up with it, and hope somebody (else) finds
>      the problem.  This doesn't take any special effort,
>      but also doesn't necessarily make anything run better.
>
>   2) Rip the machines out and send them back.
>      You don't have the reliability problem any more,
>      but you don't have a working computer system either.
>
>   3) Actively "help" the vendor discover the problem by
>      *making* them pay attention to you and then giving them
>      all the assistance that you can.
>      The nature of load-dependent or environment-dependent
>      reliability problems means that the users and administrators
>      are often an important part of identifying the problem area.
>      This can be (very) painful and not every installation
>      has the time/skills/resources to do it.
>      If you can do it, you stand a much better chance of getting
>      your particular problems fixed.

  which sounds very good ... 

  In my case, MIPS demanded a maintenance contract on the machine
  to continue an unsuccesfull effort to keep it up longer than 
  24 hours ! It will crashed for any reason, anytime.
  Of course, I sent the 6280 back and bought an IBM 6000/530.
  With the money left, I'm also buying an IBM 550 or an HP 730.
  Have not made up my mind yet ... Either of them easily beat the
  6280 in floating point speed, not to mention that they cost only
  a fraction of the MIPS's box price. IMHO, that's the way you get
  your problems fixed.
 
--
Gustavo E. Scuseria              | guscus@katzo.rice.edu
Department of Chemistry          |
Rice University                  | office: (713) 527-4082
Houston, Texas 77251-1892        | fax   : (713) 285-5155