phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (09/29/85)
(From 9/23/85 Electronics) "The bug that forced DEC to suspend shipments of Unix equipped versions of its uVAX II last June has been traced to a component failure--not the Unix operating system, as had been previously reported. DEC says it has replaced the part and resumed shipments of the Microvax. DEC would not disclose which component failed or name the supplier; but according to industry sources, the culprit was a 256K DRAM from NEC. The failure reportedly occurs after the DRAM goes 60 seconds without being written to. The next write then makes a change in the column adjacent to the one being written in. The cause of the problem is still unknown. DEC's Ultrix was at first thought to be at fault because the failure occurred when the uVAX was running under that operating system, but did not occur under the VMS operating system. However, VMS in effect masked the error because it regularly writes to all memory chips as part of normal operation. A source within DEC said 30 senior engineers were assigned to work on the problem--from manufacturing, both Ultrix and VMS teams, Microvax system engineering, and memory engineering. Early this month, the source said, the failure was duplicated on Siemens test equipment, and the results communicated to other projects within DEC. " -- God made atheists too. Phil Ngai (408) 749-5720 UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.ARPA
rcb@rti-sel.UUCP (Random) (09/30/85)
In article <4406@amdcad.UUCP> phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) writes: >(From 9/23/85 Electronics) > > DEC's Ultrix was at first thought to be at fault because the >failure occurred when the uVAX was running under that operating >system, but did not occur under the VMS operating system. However, VMS >in effect masked the error because it regularly writes to all memory >chips as part of normal operation. Anyone know where they got this information. I work on VMS almost exclusively and I have never heard of this business of writing to all memory locations regularly. Any information about this or is "Electronics" just totally confused. -- Random Research Triangle Institute ...!mcnc!rti-sel!rcb