[rescue] Amiga videos online for your enjoyment

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Steve Sandau wrote:
>>> Man, you can't use Sun's to benchmark *anything*. Even a $150K-$200K Sun 
>>> feels slow at things like... booting, installing, patching compared to 
>>> say... Pentium III systems.
>>>
>>> They DO! Admit it! I dunno what it is, but Sun systems are mega slow in 
>>> some regards.
>> True, but that is due to the fact that with Sun Systems you get 
>> diagnostics that actually say something useful ... it's just that sun 
>> systems are build to a different requirement they are mostly build to 
>> run the same applications for years on end without being shutdown at all.
> 
> Hearty agreement on the diags. I have had Suns tell me that the memory 
> in a specific slot is bad. Never seen that on any PeeCee.

I've also had to replace tons of RAM in Suns that their diagnostics never flagged.

There is no way to test RAM reliably like Sun does it in their bootup code.

They use a roll forward test that virtually guarantees it will cover up at
least half of the common RAM errors.

Things like memtest86 are the only way to really see most RAM errors.

Otherwise, yes, the Sun diagnostics are nice, but I have to say that I'm even
disappointed in most UNIX machine ROMs too.

None of the ROMs in modern systems really does the kinds of things I would
like to see, and some of the UNIX stuff is 1970s cryptic, and honestly... why?

As bad as PC BIOS is, Sun and the others could learn a lot from the things
they do well.

Of course, I realize I'm never going to get what I want from either part of
the industry, I just dream about it now and then.




-- 
shannon           | An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto
                  | one blade of grass and not fall off the face of the earth.