RE: Windows BSOD vs. AS/400

["John Taylor" <john.taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark,

>   Then let's translate this into real world.  How many 3rd party printer
> brands do you know of that can run off the /400?  Plenty.  I have yet to
> hear of even *ONE* making the /400 go belly up.  Same goes for
> disk drives,
> tape drives, terminals, etc.


With respect to printer drivers, NO ONE but IBM releases a printer driver
for the 400. Ditto terminals. IBM defines the device types, and supplies the
"drivers". I'm pretty sure that the same can be said for disk and tape
drives.

Even with a single vendor solution, and the excellent quality control that
we've come to expect from Rochester, the 400 is still not immune to those
types of problems. All you have to do is browse the HIPER alert every
Tuesday morning, and they will become apparent.

In case you don't subscribe to the HIPER alert, I did a quick scan of the
APAR Knowledge base and came up with many examples where the AS/400 became
locked up (BSOD) and had to be IPL'd (reboot) in order to recover. In some
cases, a OS reload was required.

Here are just a few examples:


APAR            Abstract
------- ---------
MA16652 UNPRED-HLIC-SRC91648151-SRC67518151-SRC65328151-SRC28098151
MA14891 WAIT-HLIC-94XXCOM HANG DURING IPL, SEE ANSWER FOR SRC
MA16017 LIC-SRCB6005121 13:00020003 14:00100200 SYSTEM CRASH
MA16835 OSP-UNPRED MACHINE TERMINATION WITH SRC B600 5121
MA21090 JVA-RUN-SRCB6005121-UNPRED SYSTEM CRASH RUNNING JAVA
MA17528 SRCA6005276-HLIC-94XXMFIOP2 SYSTEM FAILURE DURING RUNTIME

There are hundreds, maybe thousands more in the knowledge base. Have a look
for yourself.

Now, having said all that, I'd like to point out that I'm a huge fan of the
AS/400, and I think that it's the most reliable commercial business machine
available. But I think it's fair to say that it's reliability is due, in
large part, to the fact that it's hardware is closely matched to the
software, and that a single vendor is providing all of the critical
microcode (or "drivers"). Things might be markedly different if you were
able to buy an Adaptec SCSI card for the box, and had to load an "OS/400
driver" from their website.


Regards,

John Taylor
Canada

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