Re: OT - RAM disks - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Network failed and weird error message

[Dale]

Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-10-13 5:49 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com> wrote:
>> Talk about putting some stuff on tmpfs.  O_O  I have always wanted to
>> copy the tree to tmpfs and run "time emerge -uvaDN world".  Just to see
>> how fast it will go.  lol
>
> I remember once I worked for an Apple reseller that had this
> accounting program that required them to do some kind of
> 'reconciliation' every month that required a massive amount of
> processing - it took like 36 hours or something ridiculous (literally
> almost took all weekend), and he had implemented a rule that someone
> had to be there the entire time to baby sit the process - apparently
> it wasn't uncommon for there to be an error that would require them to
> restart it - and this was on a pretty powerful system at the time.
>
> Well, one weekend, when we were building a system for a customer with
> tons of RAM (for the time) I talked them into a little experiment. The
> boss didn't believe me when I told him I could get the reconciliation
> processing time down to less than a day (I told him probably just a
> few hours, but wasn't sure)... so we made a bet.
>
> I took a Quadra 900 (or maybe it was a 950), and added a bunch of RAM
> - I think we got it up to 128MB or something ridiculous (this was in
> about 1992). The accounting DB was about 40MB at the time, but hey, we
> had the RAM, so I just loaded it up.
>
> I created a RAM disk, copied the entire Accounting DB into it, and
> started running the reconciliation. The process finished after about
> 45 minutes (I was even surprised at that), and while there were no
> errors and it said it had completed successfully, the boss was sure
> that something had gone wrong. So, he re-ran it the old way on the old
> server, and almost 2 days later, when the numbers matched, he just
> shook his head and paid me off, muttering about the lost weekends over
> the last 5 years he'd been there. He kept that machine around for
> running the reconciliation for at least a few months, but then I left,
> so no idea how long he kept it for...
>
>

I remember those days.  I quit my computer job just about a year or so
before that.  I think it was when I got tired of windoze 3.1
reinstalls.  That model number sounds familiar to for some reason.  ;-) 

I ordered the mobo.  I'm worried that something could happen to this
thing and me not have a rig at all. That ain't good. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!