20 Feb
2012
20 Feb
'12
10:16 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Chuck Guzis once stated:
On 20 Feb 2012 at 10:43, William Donzelli wrote:
If you're referencing "Reliability, Availability and Serviceability",
I think that's not specific enough. ILLIAC IV was certainly a
mainframe and had none of those.
Back in the late 90s I worked at a company that had a Stratus. If you
rebooted the machine, within twenty minutes, the Status company would call
up asking if there were any issues we were experiencing and should a
technician be sent out?
There's also the apocraphyl story of a new fan unit showing up at the
office---the Stratus noticed one of the existing fan units was marginal and
had ordered itself a replacement.
So perhaps it is the service level that makes a mainframe a mainframe.
-spc (The software the we wrote for the Stratus also ran under Windows,
but cost significanly more ... )
Can
anyone fill in the ??? is an absolute and lucid way, such that
any box, regardless of appearance must pass the test in question to
qualify as a "mainframe"?
Fill in the first question mark with an "R". Fill the middle one with
an "A". Fill the last one with a "S".