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Memory Errors, Detection and Correction

I will confess in advance that this section contains a bit of proselytizing. :^) I may be in the minority these days but I think that the currently prevalent attitude toward dealing with memory errors in the PC world--which can be summarized as "don't worry, be happy"--is most unfortunate. Combined with the extreme corner-cutting now done by many manufacturers, millions of PCs are flooding the market that not only have unreliable memory systems, they provide their users with no way to detect or correct these problems.

This section attempts to give memory error detection and correction a bit more of the attention that I feel it deserves. It takes a look at the facilities available for doing error detection and correction, discusses what some of the important factors are, and hopefully will allow the user to make a more informed decision about what is worth spending money on. I consider the whole move of the PC industry to systems with no error checking to be a huge pile of dirty laundry, and I hope that I can help shed a bit of light on it here.

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