486 computers and Unix

[Peter Levin]

jca at pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) writes:

>peter at nox.se (Peter Levin) writes:
>>There have been some discussion on the subject of running 486 computers and
>>386 Unix (SCO, Interactive, Dell etc).  I know that when buying an Intel
>>486 computer you were at least one month ago obliged to sign a paper
>>stating that you were aware of that the 486 processor was not working
>>properly with Unix under alla circumstances.  It sounds like Intel got
>>a bug in the processor.  I also suppose this has been passed on to the
>>computer manufacturers.

>Are you sure you're not referring to the older 486's with the infamous bug
>that caused them to be recalled awhile back?  It's difficult to hide when
>something is not working.

This was new Intel computers (not just chips) manufactured in Ireland for
the European market.

>As for hurting sales.  Yes, it can and will hurt sales, but the customer will
>scream louder if you sell him or her a product that doesn't worked as
>promised. [.........]

All problems don't show up as you boot the machine.  Talking about SCSI
I sold a system with SCO Unix 3.2v0 almost a year ago.  The system was
rather buggy at start, but fixes from SCO has corrected most of the problems
up today (now running 3.2v2).  The machine had 4 Mbytes of memory (the
recomended size by SCO for a small machine with limited number of users).
The big problem was the SCSI tape drive (Archive 150 Mbyte internal).
The tape drive worked perfectly in single user mode.  In multiuser mode
it hanged after a couple of tape actions.  Sometimes it started up again
after one minute or an hour.  SCO had no solution.  After adding 4 Mbytes
extra, the drive was working without error.

Errors and bugs might not always show up in a way that make them obvious.
You might get a process that hangs, a device driver not working as it should
or some other problem like it.  Who to blaim?????  Hardware, Unix or the
software encountering problems?  I don't know what the bug was (only affecting
Unix, not any other operating system) and I haven't the errata sheet for
the 486 processor.  But I think that if Intel themself point to a possible
error affecting Unix performance/function, there could be some substance
behind their policy.  I must admit that they said at the same time that
Unix normaly worked, but under certain conditions there would be problems.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Levin
peter at nox.se