Aaron Kulkis wrote:
James Knott wrote:
Hans Witvliet wrote:
The only computer I have with RAID also has error correcting memory, as many servers use. Also, back in the days when I was a computer tech, servicing mini-computers, hard drive failures were far more frequent than memory.
mem, mobo's and cpu's are most likely to suffer from ESD (and heath) The effects will show up sometimes at late as in several years. I found out that most shops haven;t got a faintest clue what ESD is.
Drives will suffer not only from ESD and heath but also from wear, G-forces.
So if you obtain your system from proper qualified supplier, that takes precautions and test the componentes before using them, or take those precautions yourself. chances that you suffer from mem problems is often smaller than HDD problems.
Note, I assume you treat your components well, playing with overclocking, wrong ras/cas timing, overheated north-bridge can also cause "funny effects". Output of the powersupply has to meet more stricter demands, as mem and cpu are using still lower voltages these days. A spike of 0.1 volt did do anything some years ago, but can corrupt the content of your DDR today.
hw
Back in the days when I supported mini-computers, everything was TTL logic, with ECL used in some critical areas. The CPU was two 15 inch square boards! A 200 MB disk pack drive was the size of a washing machine and required 3 phase power. Some of the systems I worked on were water cooled. Back in those days, I worked down to the microcode level, that is the instruction set within the CPU, that enabled it to run the instruction set the applications would use.
And some CPUs from IBM even had the capability of CHANGING instruction sets between processes. Like an IBM 370 could simulate several single-user IBM 360's and single-user IBM 704's by just switching microcode with each context switch.
IBM's software from the era is nothing to rave about, but their hardware has always been top notch.
The Data General Eclipse line had a feature called "Writable Control Store", which could be used to add custom instructions to the CPU. The VAX 11/780 had it's microcode loaded from floppy at boot, but I don't recall if it was changeable in the same manner as the Eclipse WCS. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org