The debate on what per say is a mini...

From: Sellam Ismail <foo_at_siconic.com>
Date: Fri Dec 15 13:51:54 2000

On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Jim Strickland wrote:

> in the world for modern mainframes - IBM still makes them - because
> some jobs require more computing horsepower and reliability than
> modern pcs can deliver, and hooking one clydsdale to a big job instead
> of 400 squirrels is alot easier and cost effective to manage.

I think it would be much more entertaining to watch 400 squirrels. Put my
vote in for the squirrels :)

> And as for reliability, let me draw my line in the sand and say that I
> think using PCs for mission critical servers is not a good idea.
> Even if you put a decent OS on them - Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, etc,
> they're not designed or supported the way a real mini or mainframe is.
> 'course the flip side is you can keep another machine around for a
> spare for a reasonable cost...

You can also get fairly robust PCs, with dual hot-swap power supplies,
dual (or more) CPUs, mirrored hard drives (or RAID), error-correcting
RAM, etc.

Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
Received on Fri Dec 15 2000 - 13:51:54 GMT

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