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From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: What an Atarian is; Business users and the ST
Message-ID: <6630@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 18 Apr 89 23:38:16 GMT
References: <8904071554.AA03835@Fourier.sparta.com>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 28

in article <8904071554.AA03835@Fourier.sparta.com>, steveg@SPARTA.COM (Steve Goldstein) says:

> Re: Business users and the ST - How important is parity RAM to business users?
>            the ST has no parity, so if RAM starts to go bad, you may have a
>            corrupted spreadsheet or database before you find out about your
>            memory.  Does the Mac have parity?  I would think anyone using their
>            computer for accounting/bidding etc would insist upon parity.

Maybe, maybe not.  IBMs and true clones have parity ram, most other personal
computers and similar machines (Mac, Ataris, Amigas, and even NeXTs) don't.
When, if ever (physics says it can happen) a bit gets blasted by cosmic rays
on a non-parity checking machine, you don't notice it unless it's in a piece
of code, at which point you have a good chance of crashing.  But if it's in
data, you probably end up saving the bogus data.  A PClone just plain crashes
when it detects a parity error, with a nice message on the screen telling you
why you just lost the past 10 hours or so of spreadsheet work (well, really,
no one does any REAL work on these things, do they).  Parity detection lets
you know an error occurred, but you can't do anything about it.  And you 
present a target that's 9/8ths larger, so you have a 9/8ths greater chance
per unit memory of having a zapped bit.  Some workstations implement error
correcting memory, which is a definite advantage all around, unless you're
paying for it.

>             -- Steve Goldstein  <steveg@saic.com>
-- 
Dave Haynie  "The 32 Bit Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: D-DAVE H     BIX: hazy
              Amiga -- It's not just a job, it's an obsession