Well, interesting week...
 

wrote in message
ups.com...
On Feb 3, 9:19 pm, Wayne.B wrote:
On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 01:28:59 GMT, "Mike" wrote:
I was one of those guys that thought the www (netscape,
yahoo, etc) would never catch on.... oops. :-)

Compuserve management thought the same thing until it was too late to
save the franchise.

Really big oops.

What amazed me was that all these forward thinking people that
ran theses companies were rather parochial when it came to
innovation - it was all about the hardware and they never realised
what kind of communications revolution was sitting on the
horizon.


The people running these companies were controlled by the Board of Directors
who were controlled by the Venture Capital firm. Zero creativity in most of
the VC firms. We were the biggest 2nd source for disk subsystems for the
DEC and DG world. Sun approached us about designing a sever for them when
Sun was just getting really started. Our leaders said we are a DEC world
company. by then we had dropped the DG stuff. DG was never a big part of
the business anyway. Did get me a nice trip to Switzerland for a few weeks
for a DG design problem.

Well, interesting week...
 

"JimH" wrote in message
...

"Calif Bill" wrote in message
link.net...

"JimH" wrote in message
...

"BAR" wrote in message
. ..
JimH wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...
On Feb 2, 7:52 am, "JimH" wrote:
wrote in message

oups.com...





On Feb 2, 7:42 am, "JimH" wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...
1 - Computer caught fire.
2 - Office smoke damage.
That sucks! Some here will blame it on bad karma. ;-)
Was it the power supply catching fire?
I guess - that's what the Fire Marshall said. Kind of a thermal
runaway.
How old was it?
Three years.


Are you going to notify the manufacturer of the computer and/or power
supply? It is useful information for them and may lead to a recall.

I would also pursue a claim against them to recover damages from the
fire. This failure and resulting fire is certainly not to be expected
as the power supply was certainly well within it's expected useful
life.

The first question they will ask is if you turned it off before you
left the room. If it isn't a server class system it is not "intended"
to be turned on all of the time.



Wrong. Computers are made to be kept on 24x7. Why do you think they
have "sleep modes" on computers and monitors?



For "Green" listing. Power saving mode when you just leave it on for no
valid reason.

I know that Bill. The point is that the option is offered for those
wishing to run their computer all the time.

I designed Disk Drives for a living for 10 years, disk drive controllers
for 15 years and apps engineer to the disk drive world for another 5 years
and we never looked at the system to have to be on 24x7.


Why would you? The disk drive is not operating when the computer is idle.




Everything is running when the drove is spinning. The servo system is not
making big moves, but it is still keeping the actuator moving to keep the
drive on track. The electronics are powered up. The system can spin down
the drive for power saving but the electronics are still working.

Well, interesting week...
 

Calif Bill wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...
On Feb 3, 9:19 pm, Wayne.B wrote:
On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 01:28:59 GMT, "Mike" wrote:
I was one of those guys that thought the www (netscape,
yahoo, etc) would never catch on.... oops. :-)
Compuserve management thought the same thing until it was too late to
save the franchise.

Really big oops.
What amazed me was that all these forward thinking people that
ran theses companies were rather parochial when it came to
innovation - it was all about the hardware and they never realised
what kind of communications revolution was sitting on the
horizon.


The people running these companies were controlled by the Board of Directors
who were controlled by the Venture Capital firm. Zero creativity in most of
the VC firms. We were the biggest 2nd source for disk subsystems for the
DEC and DG world. Sun approached us about designing a sever for them when
Sun was just getting really started. Our leaders said we are a DEC world
company. by then we had dropped the DG stuff. DG was never a big part of
the business anyway. Did get me a nice trip to Switzerland for a few weeks
for a DG design problem.



What DEC products are still being produced today?

What DG products are still being produced today?

What Sun Products are still being produced today?

Well, interesting week...
 

"BAR" wrote in message
. ..
Calif Bill wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...
On Feb 3, 9:19 pm, Wayne.B wrote:
On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 01:28:59 GMT, "Mike" wrote:
I was one of those guys that thought the www (netscape,
yahoo, etc) would never catch on.... oops. :-)
Compuserve management thought the same thing until it was too late to
save the franchise.

Really big oops.
What amazed me was that all these forward thinking people that
ran theses companies were rather parochial when it came to
innovation - it was all about the hardware and they never realised
what kind of communications revolution was sitting on the
horizon.


The people running these companies were controlled by the Board of
Directors who were controlled by the Venture Capital firm. Zero
creativity in most of the VC firms. We were the biggest 2nd source for
disk subsystems for the DEC and DG world. Sun approached us about
designing a sever for them when Sun was just getting really started. Our
leaders said we are a DEC world company. by then we had dropped the DG
stuff. DG was never a big part of the business anyway. Did get me a
nice trip to Switzerland for a few weeks for a DG design problem.

What DEC products are still being produced today?

What DG products are still being produced today?

What Sun Products are still being produced today?

Sun software is still good. They have gone to Intel now instead of a great
in house designed chip. But I worked in the Disk Controller business in the
1980's and we were a very profitable company in the early 80's. Profit
sharing checks equivalent to 11 weeks pay. We build a clone of the VAX 780
SBI disk interface and we had a disk controller that supported hook ups to 4
CPU's and then a 16 CPU connection controller and 8 disk drives. With
software that supported multi CPU access to a disk farm.

Well, interesting week...
 

On Feb 4, 11:00 am, Harry Krause wrote:
On 2/4/2007 10:56 AM, Wayne.B wrote:

On 4 Feb 2007 03:46:34 -0800, wrote:

True story. I remember sitting in a meeting with Ed DeCastro then
head of
Data General and he thought that email would serve no purpose beyond
internal memo use within any company.

And the there were the people who couldn't think of any use for a home
computer other than storing recipes on it.

Wasn't the development of a DG machine the subplot of "Soul of a New
Machine"? Pretty good read way back then.

Yep - Tracy Kidder. It was a good book.

Well, interesting week...
 

On Feb 4, 7:52 am, BAR wrote:
wrote:
On Feb 3, 7:28 pm, "Mike" wrote:
Remember typing in all those addresses in the email for routing?
I never had to do that. On cserve, the nodes were designed for all traffic
to go to and from Ohio (their headquarters). 99% of the email that
originated from a cserve member went to a cserve member, so it was only a
matter of transferring it from one mailbox to another... on the same
network.

I got it. It was much more fun to send messages cross country. :)

My duties had more to do with managing various file libraries, and
moderating forums. I was one of those guys that thought the www (netscape,
yahoo, etc) would never catch on.... oops. :-)

True story. I remember sitting in a meeting with Ed DeCastro then
head of
Data General and he thought that email would serve no purpose beyond
internal memo use within any company.

DeCastro was a cheap *******. He was so afraid of having "his"
technology stolen he was almost paranoid. He figured that since he stole
technology from someone else somebody was going to steal "his"
technology.

I was laid off from DG around the time Ron Skates cam in to get the
expenses below the decreasing revenue.

Skates was long after my time.

Well, interesting week...
 

On Feb 4, 9:56 am, Wayne.B wrote:
On 4 Feb 2007 03:46:34 -0800, wrote:

True story. I remember sitting in a meeting with Ed DeCastro then
head of
Data General and he thought that email would serve no purpose beyond
internal memo use within any company.

And the there were the people who couldn't think of any use for a home
computer other than storing recipes on it.

Or that.

Well, interesting week...
 

Well, interesting week...
 

On Feb 4, 2:12 pm, wrote:
And the there were the people who couldn't think of any use for a home
computer other than storing recipes on it.

Or that.


Or like me, hanging around in boating newsgroups and bass guitar
sites...

Oh, and e-mail.....

Well, interesting week...
 

Calif Bill wrote:
"BAR" wrote in message
. ..
Calif Bill wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...
On Feb 3, 9:19 pm, Wayne.B wrote:
On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 01:28:59 GMT, "Mike" wrote:
I was one of those guys that thought the www (netscape,
yahoo, etc) would never catch on.... oops. :-)
Compuserve management thought the same thing until it was too late to
save the franchise.

Really big oops.
What amazed me was that all these forward thinking people that
ran theses companies were rather parochial when it came to
innovation - it was all about the hardware and they never realised
what kind of communications revolution was sitting on the
horizon.

The people running these companies were controlled by the Board of
Directors who were controlled by the Venture Capital firm. Zero
creativity in most of the VC firms. We were the biggest 2nd source for
disk subsystems for the DEC and DG world. Sun approached us about
designing a sever for them when Sun was just getting really started. Our
leaders said we are a DEC world company. by then we had dropped the DG
stuff. DG was never a big part of the business anyway. Did get me a
nice trip to Switzerland for a few weeks for a DG design problem.
What DEC products are still being produced today?

What DG products are still being produced today?

What Sun Products are still being produced today?

Sun software is still good. They have gone to Intel now instead of a great
in house designed chip. But I worked in the Disk Controller business in the
1980's and we were a very profitable company in the early 80's. Profit
sharing checks equivalent to 11 weeks pay. We build a clone of the VAX 780
SBI disk interface and we had a disk controller that supported hook ups to 4
CPU's and then a 16 CPU connection controller and 8 disk drives. With
software that supported multi CPU access to a disk farm.

Did you work for DG? AViiON development maybe? Does the 88000 BCS ring a
bell?