vantreeck@logic.dec.com (08/18/86)
>Summary: Please - No Mac's in critical medical service . . . >Mac memory run's without parity and certain ESD events, AC line faults, and >other powersupply problems can leave bits corrupted in memory without >detection. Furthermore the error detection on Mac floppies is very poor. >Using computers without parity protection in critical medical service is a >timebomb -- the resulting missinformation may kill someone. >I would say than any use of a mac to maintain charts, medication, or provide >advisory AI services should be avoided ... use an IBM computer or some >UNIX machine with parity memory and much better disk channel error detection. >Non-parity machines make nice toys, but I hope they stay out of medicine and >other critical applications (fire, police, military, CIA, FBI, etc) where >peoples lives are at stake. >-- >John Bass (DBA:DMS Design) >DMS Design (System Design, Performance and Arch Consultants) >{dual,fortune,polyslo,hpda}!dmsd!bass (805) 541-1575 Hmmmm. Your concern about memory error detection is valid. But in critical applications ECC memory is much more appropriate than parity. You would want a machine monitoring somebody in ICU to be able to recover from a minor memory error -- not just crash. I know of no low-end micros that uses ECC memory, so I wouldn't recommend ANY off the shelf micros for a critical applications. If you were really concerned about error detection, you wouldn't use UNIX either. It's quite easy to imagine some C code bug in a UNIX system corrupting the contents of other data or even code within a program, because of UNIX's lack of support for memory access violations within a process space for which support available in the hardware of some computers, e.g., all VAXs. If I were interested in a safe system, I go with an operating system that does a good job of supporting a hardware's memory protection checking capability as well, e.g., VAX/VMS. In my opinion, any consultant that recommended an IBM PC, Atari, Mac, or any other low-end micro, or recommended the UNIX operating system, for critical applications like medicine, air traffic control, or military mission critical systems should be sued for negligence, malpractice, charged with government sabotage, etc.. George Van Treeck Digital Equip. Corp. DECWRL::LOGIC::VANTREECK These are my opinions and not necessarily those of my employer.