Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!apple!bionet!agate!pasteur!ames!elroy!gryphon!desint!geoff
From: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT Memory - No Error Checking or Parity !
Summary: Seymour Cray made that mistake, too
Keywords: Memory,errors,parity
Message-ID: <1807@desint.UUCP>
Date: 28 Oct 88 06:24:04 GMT
References: <549@gt-eedsp.UUCP>
Reply-To: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Organization: Interrupt Technology Corp., Manhattan Beach, CA
Lines: 11

CDC made that mistake, too, on the old 6000 series machines.  The way
I heard it, somebody "discovered" that most of the parity errors on the
3000 series were in the parity bits themselves.  So dropping the parity
bits would not only save money, but would cut pointless downtime.

Needless to say, the result was hard-to-trace problems.  I think
(though I'm not sure) that they installed parity again on the 7600.  I'm
pretty sure that the Cray machines have ECC memory.  One thing about
Seymour -- he learns from his mistakes.
-- 
	Geoff Kuenning   geoff@ITcorp.com   uunet!desint!geoff