From owner-freebsd-hackers  Sat May 25 08:14:55 1996
Return-Path: owner-hackers
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA28345
          for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 25 May 1996 08:14:55 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA28339
          for <hackers@freebsd.org>; Sat, 25 May 1996 08:14:49 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id IAA12581; Sat, 25 May 1996 08:14:29 -0700 (PDT)
To: Randy Terbush <randy@zyzzyva.com>
cc: "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@transsys.com>, dennis@etinc.com (Dennis),
        "Karl Denninger, MCSNet" <karl@mcs.com>, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: The view from here (was Re: ISDN Compression Load on CPU) 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 25 May 1996 10:07:55 CDT."
             <199605251507.KAA24561@sierra.zyzzyva.com> 
Date: Sat, 25 May 1996 08:14:29 -0700
Message-ID: <12579.833037269@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> I spent the past 4+ years supporting both HP workstations and a
> "PC" product that I had designed from hand picked components,
> deployed in the same application. In the past 2 years we had
> far more (2:1) hardware failures in the HP equipment.

I must say, your experience is not typical.  I've also worked in
environments with multiple HP (and DEC and Sun and IBM) workstations
and hardly _ever_ seen a serious problem with one of them, save the
occasional tape drive difficultly (oh, and if DEC's Tk50 wasn't
already shipped broken from the factory you could quickly break it
simply by sticking a tape in there :-).

On the other hand, if experience with the various ISPs I work with is
anything to go on, about 1 in every 5 PCs needs to be taken out back
and shot once every couple of months, and this is with PCs built from
_carefully selected_ parts.

Fortunately, since these are PCs, I simply recommend having spares in
stock and at least one box in a "hot swap" position.  This costs a
very minimal amount of money in comparison with the workstations and
will get any reasonably forward-thinking ISP back on the air in an
hour or less if they know what they're doing.

					Jordan