[mythtv-users] Fwd: Further Notice of Seagate Hard Drive Class Action and Proposed Settlement

[Brian Wood]

On Friday 12 March 2010 12:37:12 pm Ben Kamen wrote:
> On 3/12/2010 1:16 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
> > What about the extra power consumed by the extra bit in ECC RAM, and the
> > power used by the buffer chips?
> >
> > Certainly there should be some sort of disclaimer of these factors for
> > all ECC RAM.
> >
> > Plus, I was induced to buy ECC RAM because the "error correcting" feature
> > appealed to me as a bad typist. I have been deceived by marketing, since
> > I still see errors in my documents that are stored in such RAM.
> >
> > Legislation is Urgently Needed!
> 
> And how many times have you actually seen an OS or BIOS that can
>  successfully cope with DRAM errors when one has ECC/Parity RAM installed?
> 
> I used to fix IBM PC's back in the 80's when they all came with Parity RAM.

Quite true, all RAM back then had 9 bits. They eliminated the "extra" bit 
either because they realized it was useless, or because they figured out they 
were missing a trick to make more money.

> 
> I never once saw a computer that could cope with RAM going bad and parity
>  protecting it.

I guess theoretically you wouldn't notice it until it got so bad that ECC 
couldn't cope with it.

Now it's just a way to get server users to pay more.