On Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:53:01 -0600, Hal Merritt wrote: >The encryption software starts before Windows. The software failed with a blue screen of death. > >My sense is that one or more critical files on the hard drive used by the software became corrupt as PC files are known to do. But I don't know. > >But my point was the laptop was put out of service for several days. Doesn't really matter why. This may be tolerable (or even expected) with a PC. But on a mainframe?
You are describing one of the core differences between real mainframes and etch-a-sketch computers -- the real McCoy use parity for memory and lots of checking in the I/O accesses as well (seen and unseen). The doorstop Wintel computers almost never use memory with parity and offer little or no error checking in the I/O path. To no surprise the doorstop computers fail, early & often, while the mainframes lumber on. To be slightly more fair, the PCs are rarely kept in controlled environments and can be subject to all kinds of radio and other EM interference... not _always_ at a high enough signal strength to corrupt a bit or two but a few overweight alpha particles can do wonderous things. And they strike without warning. >The complete loss of mission critical data even for a few days could be catastrophic to the company. One solution is to have backups that aren't encrypted. But, then, what would be the point of encryption in the first place? As I said, a puzzlement. I don't believe you will see the same kinds of issues with mainframe encryption and I really would be astonished if the errors were within 3 orders of magnitude of the PC (or even blade server) world. Reliability is key to the mainframe. -- Tom Schmidt Madison, WI ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
