🚀 go-pugleaf

"Computing", another UK trade rag, treats this somewhat more rationally.

From the issue of 27 July '89, page >>6<<:

<Quote>
           "Intel chip bug delays software plan".

   Software developers have discovered a bug in an early version
of the Intel 286 chip which has caused several weeks of delay
on a software development project.
   Ada specialist Alsys said it discovered the bug -- details of
which have not been published -- during work on development of a
specialist application for one of its customers.
   The bug means that problems arise when two interrupts -- signals
sent from the hardware to the operating system -- occur simultaneously,
[[Looks like the bug that Dick Dunn described ...]]
   `Our French colleagues already knew about it but we discovered 
it in the UK' said Alsys marketting manager Martyn Jordan.  `We
consider it a serious issue -- everyone takes hardware for granted
when software doesn't work' he added.
   Although Jordan added said the chances of two interrupts happening
simultaneously are low, it means his company has had to release extra
code to deal with the problem.
  'It would have been nice if we had known about the problem first'
said Jordan.
  Ian Wilson, product marketting manager at Intel said Alsys was
using a non-Intel emulator.  `Alsys is running a 286 which is over 
4 years old.  Errors were cured years ago.'  

<End quote>

(Typo's in the above are mine)

This whole thing sound to me like Alsys' marketting making excuses
for a delayed project.

As to Leon Clifford (the Electronics Weekly journalist)'s mumblings
about airplanes falling out of the sky: if recent articles in comp.risks 
are to be believed, safety-critical realtime software don't use interrupts 
anyhow; everything is done with polling.  Isn't technology wonderful!

Me?  Cynical?  Never!!

-- Steve