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From: leo@sunybcs.uucp (Leo Wilson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Memory reliability
Message-ID: <4401@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Aug-87 16:38:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.4401
Posted: Sat Aug  1 16:38:22 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Aug-87 10:03:55 EDT
References: <8708010521.AA25524@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: nobody@sunybcs.UUCP
Reply-To: leo@gort.UUCP (Leo Wilson)
Distribution: world
Organization: guest at SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 19
Summary: If mine is OK, IBM PC's don't USE parity!

In article <8708010521.AA25524@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> FXDDR@ALASKA.BITNET writes:
>Recent talk about a 16 MB ram disk and how long it would last between random
>bit hits made me wonder about the memory reliability issue.
>several years) in each word.  I recall a business pundit in the early days of
>the IBM PC who claimed that the PC was the only machine that could be used
>in business because it had parity-checked RAM.  After all, you wouldn't want
>a bit to change in your ledger where it could cause a 2**n dollar error.

If my own memory serves me correctly, IBM PC's don't actually use the parity
bit, it's just there. Seems I remember some people simply leaving the chips
out, or moving their flaky/bad chips to the parity bit socket because it
didn't matter at all. Did any of the software use the 'extra' bit? I may
be mistaken, it's been quite a while since I touched a PC, and I was more
into learning about VAXen and UNIX at the time...


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Leo E. Wilson 364 West Delavan Avenue Buffalo, NY 14213
(716)883-7573(leo@gort.cs.Buffalo.EDU)...!sunybcs[!npdp1[!leow]]!leo