On Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 03:37:30AM -0500, John Klos wrote:
> > > It wasn't. It does thing that today's desktops can't do. When is the
> > > last time you got 99.999% uptime out of a PC?
> >
> > Not counting an eight-hour power failure, one of my PC-based servers
> > has had under two minutes of unscheduled downtime in seven years of
> > 24x7 operation.  That's better than 99.9999%.
> 
> But the point is that you cannot count on it. If PC hardware works for
> seven years without fail, that is definitely the exception and not the
> rule. PC hardware is generally mediocre. Even my Amiga hardware screams
> quality next to PC hardware.

Oh, and I suppose DEC hardware is all of exemplary quality?

You'd have to look hard, in my opinion, to find a piece of PC hardware
less reliable than the RA80!  And certainly DEC committed plenty of
other sins of similar magnitude, even in the design and manufacture
of its very highest-end VAX hardware (e.g. the 9000 series, where the
CPU module design almost guaranteed overheating).

Sure, there's crummy PC hardware out there.  Always has been, always
will be.  But it's not realistic to pretend that our beloved VAXen
were paragons of reliability; in my experience, they were balky,
temperamental beasts that surely had their good points, but that
did not clearly outshine _quality_ PC hardware (certainly not of
today; probably not even that of five years ago) in reliability over
time.

Thor