OffTopic: Intel's dependent on the Alpha chip...

From: One Without Reason <vance_at_ikickass.org>
Date: Thu Nov 1 16:53:52 2001

On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Douglas Quebbeman wrote:

> Heh... depends on the mainframe.
>
> The CDC-6600, the world's first supercomputer, was for many years
> rated as having a mine-hour MTBF... turned out that was because a
> counter was oveflowing after 9 hours of ticking away, and only
> under one particular operating system (SCOPE). But even under the
> more-stable KRONOS operating system, the field engineers typically
> took it down for an hour each morning. Periodically, they would
> polish the platters on one of the disk drive units (in the early
> 90s, we used to kid about using Lemon Pledge to cure stiction, but
> they drives *really* did get polished), while smoking a cigarette.

But I don't know if the CDC-6600 (one of which I really really want to
get) fits the modern definition of "mainframe". It was more supercomputer
than mainframe, and I don't think anyone would call a Cray a mainframe.

Peace... Sridhar

> Ok, I'm drifting away from reliability, so I'd better cut & run.
>
> -dq
>
Received on Thu Nov 01 2001 - 16:53:52 GMT