On 23 Jan 2007 09:20:43 -0800, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote: >On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 20:05 +0100, R.S. wrote: >> David Andrews wrote: >> [...] >> > Some years ago we had a mixture of servers running NetWare [...] >> > raised a NMI [...] on the average of once a month > >> Once a month? What hardware did you use??? > >Those were (IIRC) HP Netserver LEs and LFs. I did say it was awhile >ago! > >> There were failures, both hw and sw, but >> the frequency was *significantly* lower. > >Lucky you. Certainly I am comparing apples and oranges; the parity >machines were different from the non-parity machines. Bit errors on one >system might-or-might-not be as frequent as bit errors on another. > >But you work with the data you have, and crude extrapolation told me >that once a day we had uncorrected bit errors on one of those 300 >machines. That meant that (if we were lucky) somebody's machine locked >up, causing us to spend a half hour of a tech's time examining the >carcass looking in vain for a software issue that wasn't there, and the >user had to recreate whatever document was in-flight at the time. I say >this is the lucky case, because the costs of recovery are well-defined. > >But in the unlucky case the bit error is undetected and makes a mess in >someone's spreadsheet, or corrupts a buffer, or... what? You'll never >find out what that data error cost your company.
But how do we get the message across to the non-technical people in charge of purchasing or authorizing purchase of laptops that this is important when you can get the My Eyes Glaze Over effect when you try to explain it to many IT professionals? I think the Hasp song book song about the crash caused by JES3 having a store instead of a load (hex 50 is a load, hex 58 a store) might come closest. > >Take my dubious numbers as you will, but my point was that bit errors do >happen. Insurance is a good thing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
