This reminds me of a support case I had when working for Applied Polymer
Technologies in the late 80's:

McDonnell-Douglas (sp?) had an obscure HP controller (HP-BASIC) in one of
our process control systems.  Various boards would fail catastrophically and
seemingly at random.  After a few board swaps, I looked at the junk that
accumulated on the boards - little black fibers.  Putting an Ohmmeter across
one, I found it was highly conductive.  Turns out that in the next room they
were sawing up carbon-fiber composite materials for analysis.  These got
into our controler and presto - failure.  Wonder what this was doing to
human lungs?

-dtd

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Donna Garverick [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, February 19, 2001 10:40 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: why use dtc's (was: DTC Education)
>
>
> Wyell Grunwald wrote:
>
> > Most of the places I have worked have terminals out on the
> manufacturing floor ON PURPOSE.  A PC cannot take the abuse,
> extreme temperatures, dust, etc that a terminal can.  In one
> place I worked, they went through a dozen keyboards a week
> because hot metal was splashed on them.  It is a whole lot
> cheaper to replace terminals than PC's, and a whole lot more
> cost effective.  Also, some floor workers are very computer
> illiterate, and teaching them how to run a PC is a monumental
> task.  Handling a terminal is enough of a challenge.  And
> finally, the security is so much better - no access to
> floppies or hard drives.  (Remember the hard drive that
> contained weapon information that "disappeared" behind a copy
> machine ?)
>
> csy has been wondering if folks still need to have dtc's
> support on 3000s.  i think this is a pretty good answer :-)
>       - d
>
> --
> Donna Garverick              | PROGRAM, tr. v., An activity similar
> Longs Drug Stores            | to banging one's head against a wall,
> 925.210.6631                 | but with fewer opportunities for
> [log in to unmask]         | reward.
>