> Date:    Wed, 19 Mar 1997 09:11:30 -0700
> From:    Timothy Hoefner <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Success Story (kind of) -Reply
>
> These success stories are great!
>
> separated the payroll checks and when the 7933 and 7935
> drives would vibrate so bad they relocated themselves across
> the room (almost)!  Last to our wonderful boss who I'm sure
>

We actually used to bet on the "races" with our four 7933's at
Jarvis Clark in the early eighties.  Particularly at physical
inventory time when the ManMan jobs would be running and pounding
the drives for up to eighteen hours at a stretch on a Series 68.

I have three stories to tell about the HP3000.  The first was
brought to mind by the 7933 story above.  In 1985 I was working as
a Sr. Sys. Analyst and a Sr. Production Analyst at JC.  We were doing the
year end PI and I was called in to look at something.  My wife was
out of town so I took my two year old daughter with me....

Well, to make a long story short she found the front panel of the
7933's irresistible and tried to shut them down.  It has been so
long since then that I don't remember what the panel actually said
but the effect was that she couldn't stop the drives while they
were in use no matter what buttons she pushed.  As this was in the
middle of a the count ticket production job (about 12-18 hours
total) I owed my job to that safety feature.

This memory then triggered another.  This time involving my two
year old son who disappeared on me one day while at work, at my
current employer.  We searched high and low for him throughout the
building until the accounting staff reported that their "computers"
(VDT's) were "frozen".  A quick hike to the computer room revealed
that all of the 7937's had been spun down and were showing red
lights.  No sign of my son.  I spin the drives up, everybody comes
back online at the exact place when the problem occurred and I
continue the search.

A few minutes later the accounting department pages me and  tells
me that the problem has happened again.  Back to the computer room.
 Drives spun down again. red lights everywhere.  Spin up the
drives.  Everybody is back to work, no problem.

Now I begin to search the area closely.  This isn't a big
installation.  There is only a 935 in a high boy cabinet
with a couple of 7937's along side another high boy cabinet that we
use for our modem racks and a couple of low boy 7937 racks.  The
935 and modem cabinet are locked.  The only drives being touched
are the 7937's in the low boy cabinets.  I look behind the cabinets
and note that the modem cabinet rear door is ajar.  I unlock
and open the front door to the modem cabinet and yes, there he is
sitting cross legged in the bottom.

Sigh....

Lastly there is my personal favourite.  My employer belongs to a
business club.  The president was convinced by one of the members
to consider a PC network as an alternative to our HP3000
installation.  At this time (1991-2?) we were still running on a
series 42 with four 7933's and we were supporting our two branch
offices over x.25 using external MUX's.

Despite many misgivings I reluctantly agreed to witness a
demonstration of the "POWER" of PC networking at a fraction of the
cost of just our annual hardware support contract with HP.

The demo setup was a 486DX33 (I think) server and two 386
workstations.  The NET O/S was Netware and the application was
written for or in BTreive (again I think).

The demo went really well and was quite impressive up to the point
where I reached behind the server and pulled out the power cord.  I
can't say that I personally would deal with people that expressed
themselves in such language but since they were in effect guests of
my company I refrained from comment.

After about 30 minutes or so of vainly trying to bring the network
back up I took the vendor's lead person and my president back to
our computer room.  I asked them to wait for a minute in front of
the HP3000/42 and went behind the machines and pulled all of the
power cords to all of the equipment.

I waited about 5-10 seconds and then plugged everything back in
again starting with the 7933's.  Wordlessly I left the computer
room and with the visitor and my boss following we returned to the
account department where the demo had been staged.

Everybody was still at their desks working on the computer system.
I asked if there was a problem?  No was the the reply.  Had there
been a problem?  One lady suggested that the computer "got slow"
for a few moments.  Two said that some sort of message came up but
they couldn't remember what it was.

I turned to the vendor and said in effect that when he could
guarantee that his equipment and software could pass that test I
would be pleased to recommend its acquisition.  I haven't heard from
them since and my boss doesn't make any more suggestions that we
find a "cheaper" computer system.  A year later we upgraded to the
935 (used) at about half the the price as the 14 station LAN
solution proposed.  HP's hardware support cost were dramatically
cut at the same time...but that's another story...

Regards,
Jim
---
James B. Byrne                Harte & Lyne Limited
vox: +1 905 561 1241          9 Brockley Drive
fax: +1 905 561 0757          Hamilton, Ontario
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