Comment Times change (Score 3, Insightful) 193
Lottsa years ago I used to maintain a CDC 7600, not only did it need full refrigeration, but it's original design spec was for an MTBF of 15 hours! The designers reckoned that it was so fast that the biggest job imaginable could be run in that time.
Of course it did better than that in the end, but it was a bugger of a job to fix, and the backplane was 6 inches deep in twisted pair wires. Just imagine making wiring changes.