Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Parity in Internal Data Paths of Processors
Message-ID: <1989Sep14.153648.25129@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <124311@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <AGLEW.89Sep11230245@chant.urbana.mcd.mot.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 89 15:36:48 GMT

In article <AGLEW.89Sep11230245@chant.urbana.mcd.mot.com> aglew@urbana.mcd.mot.com (Andy-Krazy-Glew) writes:
>While working for a minicomputer company, I heard that the major
>difference between minicomputers and microcomputers was that minis did
>error detection (and occasionally correction) on major functional data
>paths, not just the bus, and micros didn't...

This is, at the very least, a revisionist definition of "minicomputer".
None of the major minis -- back in the days when the distinction was
clear -- did such detection on either the bus or the internal data paths.
If you were lucky, they did it on their memory boards, but even that was
by no means universal.
-- 
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
