>> But, um... isn't our Government's most common
>>computer is the old 486? (see link)
>
> But where do you think those 486's are? In
>charge
> of vitally important automated tasks, or the
> personal work computers of Joe Blow Government
> Worker? So Joe Blow's log of office supply
>purchases
> gets sorted incorrectly. Not the end of the
>world.

Ah, now you guys are getting into *my* area of expertise.

Sam, don't underestimate the stupidity of the Government. I know. I work for them. Until very recently, we had mission-critical applications on ancient PRIME computers. Even now, most of our apps run on old Data General computers that need PROM updates to be Y2k compliant. We have workstations we're going to need to get rid of because DG says they have no plans to release a Y2k fix for them (nobody else in the world uses them anymore apparently, and for good reasons.)

In my little area of the world, I have the PROM update tapes for my systems and I have the OS update that will make us Y2k compliant. And even if we crashed, the worst that would happen would be that somebody doesn't get real-time streamflow data for a day or so (something that happens more often than it should now *anyway*). But don't think that the Government isn't running mission-critical apps on severely outdated computers. We are, and we will continue to do so. It seems to be how we do things. I read Federal Computer Week all the time, and it surprises me how much *farther behind* other divisions are when compared to us, and we're woefully behind the technology curve.

I remember an article last year about a particular agency that had just gotten rid of an ancient mainframe that was running mission critical apps. It was some ridiculously old thing that still used punch cards. And the people there were *sorry* to see it go. What did they replace it with? 486's, I believe.

> > > [all you have to do is reboot]
> >
> > Is it really that easy on a mainframe? I
>>mean, we're not talking about some desktop
>>computer here.
>
> Sure it's that easy. Mainframes can reboot. It
> just takes longer (15-20 minutes, maybe).

We have a server here that takes upwards of 45 minutes to reboot. It has to check every local filesystem when it boots, and has about 40 GB of local disk space.

But even so, who cares? You do these things on off hours anyway. I only reboot that puppy for upgrades and emergencies. It's up 24/7 otherwise.


>Actually
> it's probably a lot easier than that. No
>computer
> I know (even ancient onces, like 8088s and Apple
> IIs and Commodore 64s) grinds to a halt on a
> divide by zero error. The *program* crashes

Actually, I think my old C64 used to flake out on a division by 0 error. ;-)

>(after
> which you simply rerun it), but the computer
> won't.

Never underestimate the power of Microsoft. I'm sure that if Windows 98 tries to divide by 0 internally, it crashes completely and totally ;-)