Destructive labelling (was RE: Tandy XENIX Disks)

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_30below.com>
Date: Sat Oct 26 12:24:01 2002

Rumor has it that Gene Buckle may have mentioned these words:

> > I'm surprised that Intel didn't try to blame the Pentium FDIV bug on
> that...
> >
>This supposedly happened sometime in the late 70's early 80's.

As long as the Pentium was on the drawing board... That could've too!
(Hell, the Itanic is almost on topic already... ;-)

> > It still cracks me up that according to Intel I'm a 48,000-year-old
> man... ;-)
>
>Oh do tell. :)

One of Intel's "excuses" before actually acquiescing and replacing the
original Pentiums was that "under normal computing use [1], a person would
only trigger the bug once every 24,000 years..."

I had 2 separate Autocad files that when rendered in 3-D wouldn't render
right on a buggy Pentium but would render fine on a non-buggy Pentium or a 486.

They weren't anything mongo, either... one was a 3-D rendition of a door
canopy, and the other was a simple desk with a couple of shelves. When
rendered, the center shelf on the desk jutted out 4 or 5 inches past the
desk on the buggy pentium!

We couldn't figure out what the Hades was wrong with my drawing file, until
I rendered it on my workstation (an old bodged-up 486-33). Granted, it took
a very long time to do it [2], but both files rendered fine on that old
beast, but rendered wrong on 3 different brand new pentium-based machines.

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

[1] as in, not *trying* to execute special code or computations that would
prove the bug exists; like doing that special Calculator routine that would
spit out wrong numbers...

[2] Set up job, go get lunch (15-20 minutes). See one error, make change,
set up job, go do 4-5 services calls... etc... Granted, that was better
than rendering on my old 386sx-16 (With Math-Co) - Set up job, go make
dinner, eat dinner, watch a couple hours of TV... check job, make one
change, set up job, go to bed.... Took me all weekend to do a job that I
could have done in 30 minutes on my 700Mhz (dual 350's) Pentium-2 Machine...

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch_at_30below.com
What do you do when Life gives you lemons,
and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????
Received on Sat Oct 26 2002 - 12:24:01 BST

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