PS/1 How Much?

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Sun Feb 8 16:24:35 1998

> Tis' true if you meant ECC parity but this is really OVERKILL in
> consumer machines that we're using. My machine is happily running
> for years on non-parity as long as the memory are top quality kind
> and cover by life-time warrenty if possible. Mac are doing that for
> years ever since first Apple II all the way to today's Mac PCI's.

Yes, I would not think of adding full ECC to a home computer. Doing so
would probably add $25 to the cost of producing the machine - something
the marketing types would scream about because it really adds nothing for
them to sell!

Anyway, it would have been nice if PeeCees were made so a parity error
would tell the BIOS (or DOS) to try to clean up and do a gracefull
shutdown, rather than just reporting the error and halting. Many parity
errors are soft errors, only effecting one bit of the memory, so there is
a chance that the programs (or DOS) could react and do a little damage
control.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Sun Feb 08 1998 - 16:24:35 GMT