On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, at 9:09pm, Tom Buskey wrote: >>> My Sparc 20 had a memory error for a month because I was too lazy to shut >>> it down & reseat the simm. Can PCs do error correction like that? >> >> Sure, with ECC RAM. :) > > Which is in (just about?) every Sun system. It's harder to find in a PC.
It was a question of market and cost: Sun hardware was targeted at fairly high-end uses, where pretty much anyone would want ECC RAM. When the whole system costs $10,000, spending $500 more on ECC RAM only makes sense. When the whole system costs $1500, spending $500 more on ECC RAM is a harder decision to make. Today, though, ECC is fast becoming the standard in PCs. Memories are so large that (1) it is silly not to and (2) you pretty much need to. More memory makes the chances of errors statistically more likely. > I've seen "Real Weasel" (sp?) for PCs. It looked pretty cool. It was > also expensive. Yah, the PC Weasel and descendants were designed to retrofit serial console support onto systems that did not have it but really needed it. Most of the time, you just buy a motherboard with onboard serial support. > I'm not sure, but I think NetBSD can do serial console (& install?) on a > PC. I think you still don't get the BIOS stuff. I know LILO, GRUB, and Linux all support serial console. > Another advantage of Sun is no interrupts. I think Macs have this too. Er, um, pretty much every general purpose computer I know of has interrupts. I know the Mac sure does. If you mean "manual configuration of interrupts", those went away with the ISA bus. (People who persist in using the ISA bus deserve what they get.) How else will hardware signal the processor it needs attention? -- Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
