🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 17 Nov 1999 at 13:55:13, Anahata <anahata@freereed.demon.co.uk>
wrote in demon.tech.pc:
(Reference: <14cu08.g51.ln@127.0.0.1>)

>In other words, at a given clock speed a given chip will either work or it
>won't.  Of course that's not the only hardware reason why a PC may crash,
>but that's another matter.

Would you always know if it had failed to work correctly. For example,
if overclocking meant that there wasn't enough time for carry bits to
ripple their way through a register. There are probably other examples.
Why would an error be reported when, if everything is done according to
spec, there can be no error. Occasionally losing the carry into the most
significant bit of a value may not make much difference in a game -
perhaps it might add a little extra excitement. I wouldn't want to
discover that it had happened on unknown occasions in my accounts.

In broad terms, there are four things that can happen to a transaction -
it can work perfectly, it can crash the computer, it fails and generates
an error message telling you that it has failed, and it goes wrong and
doesn't tell you.

I can put up with the first three. I will always do my utmost to reduce
the risk of the last happening.
-- 
John Underwood