486 computers and Unix

[John C. Archambeau]

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.

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.  Case and point, we sold a Gigatrend DAT drive to a customer as part
of a Sun 4/470 system.  Guess what, the DAT doesn't work.  After going through
all sorts of bull, we finally find out from Gigatrend's development staff in
England that there's currently no way to make their DAT work with a Sun 4/470.
The problem deals with an incompatability with the SCSI host adaptor.

Well, that was fine and dandy, but we were cautious (or tried to be) we asked
the distributor and Gigatrend in Carlsbad if the DAT would work with a
Sun 4/470.

And during this whole time we were screaming at Gigatrend about it, the
customer was screaming at us even louder.  Not pretty at all.

Not knowing about incompatabilities can be as bad, if not worse, than trying
to pass off an incompatability as a product that will work.

     // JCA

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