Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhc!edwardm
From: edwardm@hpcuhc.HP.COM (Edward McClanahan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Re: NeXT Memory - No Error Checking or Parity !
Message-ID: <680002@hpcuhc.HP.COM>
Date: 16 Dec 88 23:47:16 GMT
References: <1429@cpoint.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 28

> ...this is a MBTF of 43 days...

You used this acronym so consistently, I wasn't sure...  But you must mean
MTBF.

I don't know of a single PC-class computer that uses ECC memory.  The IBM PC
uses PARITY to DETECT errors.  I believe that all Atari, Apple, Commodore,
Compac, Dell, etc... "affordable" computers don't even have Parity!  One could
argue that cost is the determinant.  The obvious rebuttal to this tack is the
fact that several of these manufacturers sell machines in the $10,000 range.

In the PC days of the past, memory failures may have been acceptable.  No
cached/paged data needed to be flushed/posted for consistency.  In fact,
crashes are no big deal on a vintage PC (unless your editor doesn't do
frequent posts).  No LAN would be left in an inconsistent state.

All that is changing quickly.  OS/2 and UNIX both have Virtual Memory.  Many
of the high performance PCs contain cache (albiet presently usually of the
write-through nature).  Ram-disks are quite common.  And finally, a large
percentage of PCs are being integrated into LANs.  We all witnessed how
quickly "corruption" can infect other machines on these LANs (refer to the
email/Internet WORM reports).

If all these concerns are valid, where are all the ECC memory add-on boards?
Also, which NeXT competitors use ECC memory?

ed "I still wanna NeXT" mcclanahan
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