Stratus Computer said last week that it will get rid of 500 workers, or 18 percent of its workforce.

Among producers of fault-tolerant computers, he likes Tandem and Stratus Computers.

Others range from Autodesk to Cray Research and Stratus Computer.

After Stratus Computer reported its earnings for the year would be lower than those of last year, shares hit a 52-week low, 23 3/8, before settling at 23 3/4, down 5 1/2.

The company was founded in 1980 as Stratus Computer, Inc. in Natick, Massachusetts, and adopted its present name in 1999.

Stratus Computer was a Marlborough, Massachusetts, based producer of fault tolerant minicomputers.

In August of 1998 Ascend bought Stratus Computers for $822 million in stock.

Stratus Computer continues to defy the odds by stringing up quarter after quarter of solid profits.

IEX developed the software, which ran on hardware built by Stratus Computers.

Commercial support for the system ended in 1998 when Stratus Computer, then the parent of Isis Distributed Systems, refocused purely on hardware solutions for the telecommunications industry.