5 Jul
2025
5 Jul
'25
2:13 a.m.
On 05/07/2025 01:08, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 2025-07-04 4:15 p.m., Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
But IBM field service had to follow the diagnostic MAPs which listed the
steps to debug a problem, sometimes in order of cost rather that
probability of failure.
Our CE once remarked they were written by accountants not engineers.
The result was that when a 3380 disk drive (DASD in IBM terms) failed
the Customer Engineer (CE) had to follow a tortuous set of tests...
.. the 3380 had two sets of heads, so every was duplicated and the
diagnostics swapped every component in turn between the data paths to
make sure nothing else was faulty...
.. invariably it was the "head and drive" assembly which on a 3380 was a
sealed unit and very expensive to make.
The CE usually brought one with him which was good, as it had to
acclimatise for a couple of hours before fitting, so running the other
tests didn't cost much time...
Yeah, this was 1978.
What we used to spend on IT stuff back then is really amazing.
So much!
True, but you got field service,
not some AI telling you read web page xxx, with a dead computer. Ben.
PS: serial port had some active input on boot, and windows thought
that was a mouse not the usb port.
Dave