That's one expensive motherboard

[MaxDepth]

Dateline: Chicago

A burned-out computer motherboard caused the shutdown of Chicago's 911 center last month -- and the repairs will cost the city more than $641,000, officials said Tuesday.

 

[Doggiedog]

Pretty stupid to have a single point of failure like that.

They can only blame themselves.

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Originally posted by: MaxDepth
Dateline: Chicago

A burned-out computer motherboard caused the shutdown of Chicago's 911 center last month -- and the repairs will cost the city more than $641,000, officials said Tuesday.

Maybe it's one of those custom built ones by PCResources. You know, the ones where he took AMD and Pentium motherboards and arc-welded them together, then magically made them ten times more powerful than their individual parts.

 

[Thraxen]

"The city will have to absorb the cost," Huberman said, adding that the city was unable to learn why the equipment failed after it worked properly for nine years.

Maybe it failed because it was a 9 year old motherboard?

 

[Kelemvor]

"The city will have to absorb the cost," Huberman said, adding that the city was unable to learn why the equipment failed after it worked properly for nine years.

I was thinking that exact same thing.
Umm, maybe it failed because it was 9 YEARS OLD

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Seems to be a bit on the high side.
<-- actually been in a 911 station many times.

Here's something to think about:
The South Lake Tahoe 911 system was down last Saturday because the phone lines WERE SHOT BY A SHOTGUN and all the lines/fiber had to be spliced.

 

[CVSiN]

naw it was an Emachine

ahhaha =)

 

[RobCur]

fvcking waste of our tax dollars, that's why its not good to pay too much taxes!!! wwhat a b unch of incompetent idiots moron who would overcharge astronomically so they can buy a lexus and buy a half a million dollar house with our tax money! it's doesn't help the poor, infact it keep people that shouldn't be poor really, poor and in poverty. it's just a fcking motherboard that can be had for 30-50 dollars...
must be an ancient 486 w/66mhz or Pentium mobo with P60 processor, heh. what an ancient piece of sthinking crap, they should have upgraded anyway. fcking cheaparsehole

 

[no0b]

heh, I remember when the airtraffic system in chicago used vacuum tubes. A whole 5 years ago......

 

[RobCur]

Originally posted by: FrankyJunior

"The city will have to absorb the cost," Huberman said, adding that the city was unable to learn why the equipment failed after it worked properly for nine years.

I was thinking that exact same thing.
Umm, maybe it failed because it was 9 YEARS OLD

maybe they are too cheap to upgrade every 1 or 2 years?

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I doubt the "motherboard" was of the PC variety. 911 systems typically have very little (if any) PC architecture in them. Upgrading a system is not an easy task, downtime is a major issue.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: RobCur
fvcking waste of our tax dollars, that's why its not good to pay too much taxes!!! wwhat a b unch of incompetent idiots moron who would overcharge astronomically so they can buy a lexus and buy a half a million dollar house with our tax money! it's doesn't help the poor, infact it keep people that shouldn't be poor really, poor and in poverty. it's just a fcking motherboard that can be had for 30-50 dollars...
must be an ancient 486 w/66mhz or Pentium mobo with P60 processor, heh. what an ancient piece of sthinking crap, they should have upgraded anyway. fcking cheaparsehole

It's likely an IBM, Digital, or some other Mainframe system system and not a PC. Also, only $500k has actually been spent on the computer system, though part(likely much of it) has been spent on a backup system. These aren't off the shelf computers they're running our Uberest system would most likely be woefully inadequate for such a task.