1 Nov
2001
1 Nov
'01
8:53 a.m.
On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
Heh... depends on the mainframe.
The CDC-6600, the world's first supercomputer, was for many years
rated as having a mine-hour MTBF... turned out that was because a
counter was oveflowing after 9 hours of ticking away, and only
under one particular operating system (SCOPE). But even under the
more-stable KRONOS operating system, the field engineers typically
took it down for an hour each morning. Periodically, they would
polish the platters on one of the disk drive units (in the early
90s, we used to kid about using Lemon Pledge to cure stiction, but
they drives *really* did get polished), while smoking a cigarette.
But I don't know if the CDC-6600 (one of which I really really want to
get) fits the modern definition of "mainframe". It was more supercomputer
than mainframe, and I don't think anyone would call a Cray a mainframe.
Peace... Sridhar
Ok, I'm drifting away from reliability, so I'd
better cut & run.
-dq