5 ms·

It was pretty bad from the get go, though. It was a trivially occurring bug without a good workaround. You literally could not fully trust floating point divisi

by anyfoo 4y ago

It was pretty bad from the get go, though. It was a trivially occurring bug without a good workaround. You literally could not fully trust floating point divisions on that CPU, and you could even see that by just using the Windows calculator or Excel. There were others, like the F00F bug[1], that were bad, but even before someone found an ingenious workaround, it wasn't that relevant to e.g. single user machines. [1] http://www.rcollins.org/ddj/May98/F00FBug.html http://www.rcollins.org/ddj/May98/F00FBug.html [2] [2] If you enjoy that kind of thing, you will enjoy that website in general.

bombcar 4y ago
Yep - it was more the response than how bad it was (at the time many CPUs still didn't really have floating-point, especially in the wild). If they had offered to replace ANY processor for anyone who asked, some percentage would have taken them up on it but not many. As it was the "provide proof" part made it much worse.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  Good point. At the time, if Intel had had a better response to it, perhaps many people would have been fine to continue using their faulty CPU as a Pentium "without FPU", or only in contexts where they did not really care that much (e.g. playing games).
- brewdad 4y ago
  I understand the why. Many people unaffected would have insisted on a replacement just because it was offered. Younger me would have almost certainly been in that camp. Somewhere between “litigating” your need and Oprah giving away a CPU to everyone was the sweet spot Intel never found.
  - anyfoo 4y ago
    I don't think "Oprah giving away a CPU to everyone" is really one side of the spectrum, though. In this case, everyone affected already bought the "car", and by themselves. I understand that replacing every CPU would have caused serious problems for Intel, but let's not paint it as if people were looking for free stuff. I'm also not sure how many people really would have followed through. You say you would have been in that camp, but most likely you were an "enthusiast"?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      They could likely have done something where anyone who really wanted a replacement got one, BUT - anyone who had one of the CPUs and didn't really care about a replacement could (register? send it in? get it marked at an official retailer?) and get $20 or $50 or something. If it had been pretty open, most people would NOT have bothered complaining (except the AMD trolls hehehehe) - everyone I knew who had one was more interested in proving that they had the problem then actually resolving it, until they were told they had to "accept" damage goods.

by anyfoo 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

Yep - it was more the response than how bad it was (at the time many CPUs still didn't really have floating-point, especially in the wild). If they had offered to replace ANY processor for anyone who asked, some percentage would have taken them up on it but not many. As it was the "provide proof" part made it much worse.

anyfoo 4y ago
Good point. At the time, if Intel had had a better response to it, perhaps many people would have been fine to continue using their faulty CPU as a Pentium "without FPU", or only in contexts where they did not really care that much (e.g. playing games).
brewdad 4y ago
I understand the why. Many people unaffected would have insisted on a replacement just because it was offered. Younger me would have almost certainly been in that camp. Somewhere between “litigating” your need and Oprah giving away a CPU to everyone was the sweet spot Intel never found.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  I don't think "Oprah giving away a CPU to everyone" is really one side of the spectrum, though. In this case, everyone affected already bought the "car", and by themselves. I understand that replacing every CPU would have caused serious problems for Intel, but let's not paint it as if people were looking for free stuff. I'm also not sure how many people really would have followed through. You say you would have been in that camp, but most likely you were an "enthusiast"?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    They could likely have done something where anyone who really wanted a replacement got one, BUT - anyone who had one of the CPUs and didn't really care about a replacement could (register? send it in? get it marked at an official retailer?) and get $20 or $50 or something. If it had been pretty open, most people would NOT have bothered complaining (except the AMD trolls hehehehe) - everyone I knew who had one was more interested in proving that they had the problem then actually resolving it, until they were told they had to "accept" damage goods.