🚀 go-pugleaf

davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr):
. [writing about Iomega's Bernoulli boxes:]
.   Salesman takes out a cartridge and holds it up. "These units are shock
. resistant," he says, and scales it across the room like a frisbee.
. "Being sealed when not in use they are (kicks the cartridge back across
. the room) dust resistant."
. [etc.]

I heard a similar story once and I'd like to know if anyone can verify it.
The story is that Tandem once demonstrated that their systems are truly
fault tolerant by *shooting* one with a .45 and demonstrating that it would
keep on running (a little slower, of course).  Any Tandemites out there?

Jeff d'Arcy     OS/Network Software Engineer     jda...@encore.com
  If Encore endorsed my opinions, they couldn't afford to pay me

In article <240@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>  I once shared a room in Boston with a QA person from Leading Edge (we
>were there for a SF convention). He was telling me about the meeting at
>which LE evaluated the IOMEGA storage system...
[...]
>  Salesman takes out a cartridge and holds it up. "These units are shock
>resistant," he says, and scales it across the room like a frisbee.
>"Being sealed when not in use they are (kicks the cartridge back across
>the room) dust resistant."
[...]
>" And of course, even when running, the unit is (lifts the front of
>the case about 6 inches and drops it back on the table) still shock
>resistant."

>  I'm told that the reactions were such total disbelief that some people
>refused to believe that there wasn't some trick involved.

I did a Beta site evaluation of their first drive, and enjoyed dropping it
while it was accessing (there would be a couple of seconds delay while the
drive recovered!). When their engineer visited to drop off the unit, he wanted
to do the standard shock demo, which included blowing cigarette smoke on the
running drive, but neither he nor any of us smoked!

Tom Almy
to...@tekgvs.labs.tek.com
Standard Disclaimers Apply

P.S. BTW, as a technical aside, while most people thought these drives were
slow, they could operate at standard hd speeds if full track buffering and a
DMA SCSI controller was used (I tested the drive under CP/M 86 on an S-100
system). The servo controlled heads would have to reseek before every read,
so the full track buffering was a must, otherwise performance was about 2x an
8" DSDD floppy.

While with Xerox AI, I heard about the following bug report...

It seems that an AI researcher had one of the Xerox 1108 LISP machines
at his cabin up in the mountains.  His cabin was isolated and he used
a generator to provide electricity.  The 1108 in general was hardy enough
to run off of the generator, but the eight inch floppy drive was sensitive
to power fluctuations.  The result was that the floppy would report data
errors if used right after the cabin's toilet had been flushed as the
water pump would kick in, lowering the amount of power available to the
LISP machine.  (The hard drive didn't seem to be affected.)

Thus an official bug report was created and entered... "Floppy disk drive
reports errors when toilet is flushed."

					Andrew MacRae

a...@grendal.Sun.COM (Andrew MacRae) writes:

>While with Xerox AI, I heard about the following bug report...

>It seems that an AI researcher had one of the Xerox 1108 LISP machines
>at his cabin up in the mountains.  His cabin was isolated and he used
>a generator to provide electricity.  The 1108 in general was hardy enough
>to run off of the generator, but the eight inch floppy drive was sensitive
>to power fluctuations.  The result was that the floppy would report data
>errors if used right after the cabin's toilet had been flushed as the
>water pump would kick in, lowering the amount of power available to the
>LISP machine.  (The hard drive didn't seem to be affected.)

>Thus an official bug report was created and entered... "Floppy disk drive
>reports errors when toilet is flushed."

>					Andrew MacRae

Hi Andy!

I got to deinstall that machine (it was a loaner), and it really was in an
isolated spot.  Little farmhouse sitting at the top of a mountain in NH.

The day I pulled it out, the owner wasn't there and the only other occupant 
of the farm refused to help me carry it because of a bad back (if you've
ever tried to lift an 1108, you know why he was hesitant).

Adding to the fun was the fact that the ground was extremely muddy so I 
couldn't wheel it out to my car.  Getting it in the trunk was a real 
truss-buster...

And then there was the time I had to help carry an 1108 up a spiral
staircase...

*******************************************************************************
* James M. Turner                   *      Great moments in Aviation #4:      *
* System Engineer, Northeast Region * Controller Ray Darr breaks the all time *
* Solbourne Computer, Inc.          *  record when he simultaneously vectors  *
*                                   *   94 targets through the New York TCA.  *
* tur...@Soleast.Solbourne.COM      *  He is relieved from his shift when he  *
* (617) 273-3313                    *     orders a seagull to squawk 1200     *
*******************************************************************************

Hi James,

	Glad to see that you survived the demise of EnVos.

	As I recall you have a number of stories to tell about LISP
	hacking.  In particular I seem to remember something about
	how a certain LISP system made use of the symbol TAK very
	early in its gen process so as to improve its benchmark
	timings.  Of course I may be remembering all wrong...

						Andy

In article <240@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>  Salesman takes out a cartridge and holds it up. "These units are shock
>resistant," he says, and scales it across the room like a frisbee.

Is what I heard in college true,
that Hewlett-Packard used to demo their calculators this way?
-- 
{decuac.dec.com,cucstud,sundc}!c3pe!charles	ex::!echo Boo:

In article <8255@c3pe.UUCP> charles@c3pe.UUCP (Charles Green) writes:
>In article <240@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>>  Salesman takes out a cartridge and holds it up. "These units are shock
>>resistant," he says, and scales it across the room like a frisbee.

>Is what I heard in college true,
>that Hewlett-Packard used to demo their calculators this way?

There was a story that came back from a Comdex about HP getting its booth
stuck next to another big computer manufacturer, and both of them were
showing PC clones. The expected 'can you top this' wars ensued, which
culminated with one of the HP people pushing their system off the table,
then picking it up, plugging the cables back in, and firing it off without
incident. The people in the other booth were unwilling to match that.


Sean Malloy					    |
  {hplabs!hp-sdd, akgua, ucsd, nosc}!crash!malloy   | "I am here by the will of
  ARPA: crash!malloy@nosc			    | the people, and I will
Navy Personnel Research and Development Center	    | not leave until I get my
San Diego, CA 92152-6800			    | raincoat back."
  UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd, akgua, ucsd}!nprdc!malloy   |
  ARPA: mal...@nprdc.navy.mil			    |

In article <8255@c3pe.UUCP> charles@c3pe.UUCP (Charles Green) writes:
>In article <240@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>>  Salesman takes out a cartridge and holds it up. "These units are shock
>>resistant," he says, and scales it across the room like a frisbee.

>Is what I heard in college true,
>that Hewlett-Packard used to demo their calculators this way?

A friend of mine had his hp11 handled this way by his friend,
out of accident. The hp11, as well as all other in the hp10
series is very compact. The calculator went like a projectile
through the whole classroom, and the result was a dent above
the display. Apart from that, he still has no problems with it.

======================================================================
Everybody know that the DECstation is a pdp8, which is a RISC,
but where did MIPS computers get into it?

	- Johnny Billquist
======================================================================

In article <10...@crash.cts.com>, malloy@crash (Sean Malloy) writes:
]There was a story that came back from a Comdex about HP getting its booth
]stuck next to another big computer manufacturer, and both of them were
]showing PC clones. The expected 'can you top this' wars ensued, which
]culminated with one of the HP people pushing their system off the table,
]then picking it up, plugging the cables back in, and firing it off without
]incident. The people in the other booth were unwilling to match that.

Reminds me of the brochure for the HP-85 (or whatever), their laptop
8086 (not 8088) clone.  One of the specs was that it would take a 100G
shock on any point of its case with the cover (display) closed.  I
suspect that that's not as much as it sounds (it's pretty easy to
generate a high instantaneous force by dropping something), but H-P
seems to be in the habit of doing things like that...
-- 
ames >>>>>>>>>  |	Robert Krawitz <r...@think.com>	245 First St.
bloom-beacon >  |think!rlk	(postmaster)		Cambridge, MA  02142
harvard >>>>>>  .	Thinking Machines Corp.		(617)876-1111

In article <10...@crash.cts.com> mal...@crash.cts.com (Sean Malloy) writes:
>In article <8255@c3pe.UUCP> charles@c3pe.UUCP (Charles Green) writes:
>>In article <240@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>>>  Salesman takes out a cartridge and holds it up. "These units are shock
>>>resistant," he says, and scales it across the room like a frisbee.

>>Is what I heard in college true,
>>that Hewlett-Packard used to demo their calculators this way?

Yup. I nearly got a heart attack when the sales guy said "and then you
can do THIS", and dropped the HP-25 to the floor, took it up, and
continued the demo.  Since this was here in Stockholm, Sweden, I
assume that stunt was part of some standard demo song-and-dance that
HP programmed their salespersons with :-)

Nice thing, the HP-25. Wrote My First Program on it.
Could not afford one, but the HP sales brochure explained all its
instructions. (Now, where did you see a computer glossy broschure
giving away the instruction set last time, eh?)

I have the impression that the more limited, and weird, the computer
gets, the more fun it is to program. Really gives you a challenge!

-- 
Per Lindberg (The Mad Programmer)  !      __!__
Front Capital Systems              !  _____(_)_____  Ceci n'est pas une Piper
Linneg 5, 11447 Stockholm, Sweden  !     !  !  !

In article <9...@front.se> p...@front.se (Per Lindberg) writes:
>
>Yup. I nearly got a heart attack when the sales guy said "and then you
>can do THIS", and dropped the HP-25 to the floor, took it up, and
>continued the demo.  Since this was here in Stockholm, Sweden, I
>assume that stunt was part of some standard demo song-and-dance that
>HP programmed their salespersons with :-)

Their peripherals are *darn* tough, too. A previous employer had
several outlying research stations up in the boondocks of eastern
Oregon and Washington that measured various wildlife behavior
patterns and other stuff and recorded the information on a HP 150
with a dual 3.5" floppy unit and some assorted interface gear.
Apparently, one of the stations was in the path of a large forest
fire and had to be moved quickly to another location.

Of course, everyone was running around stuffing things into Jeeps
and not really paying attention to securing any of the equipment
against vibration or anything. After packing up, they researchers
set off for the new site at around 35 or 40 miles per hour. After
bouncing over a particularly large pothole, the disk unit for the
HP 150 bounced out of the Jeep and hit the road -- at about 35
MPH. 

They figured it to be broken for certain, and brought it in to be
fixed. It looked *awful* -- big dents in the top and the
faceplace was broken in several places. We plugged it into a
spare HP 150, flipped it on -- worked like a dream. Amazed the
living daylights out of us. We beat the dents out of the case and
put on a new faceplate and sent it back out to the field.

*Damn* fine equipment.

>I have the impression that the more limited, and weird, the computer
>gets, the more fun it is to program. Really gives you a challenge!

It's the unofficial HP motto: "Who cares if it's like the other guy? Let's
                    make it do something really *neat*!"


>Per Lindberg (The Mad Programmer)  !      __!__



-- 
David Boyes       Disclaimer: Rice University couldn't find an opinion
dbo...@rice.edu      with both hands, a map, a compass, and an escort
                     squad of US Marines. This isn't the one
		     they're looking for either.