FreeBSD 6.x CVSUP today crashes with zero load ...

[Pete French]

> I am not looking for workarounds, like ECC. I want the box to break 
> immediately once any single component goes wrong...

Uh, that *is* what ECC does (or can do). Without ECC your broken hardware
continues to run un-noticed. With ECC you can either make it break
immediatley, or log an error or continue to run.

Stop thinking of ECC as error correction and start thinking of it as
error detection. No ECC gives you no way to detect failing memory.

-pete.