[SunRescue] RE: More mainframe bits...

[Ken Hansen]

Back when I was in Computer Operations in a Large facility (a dozen or so 3090/600 machines, backin the late 1980's), the 3490 tape cartridges were new, and were destined to replace the 3420 reel tapes we had so many of. For those that haven't seen 3490 tapes, they looked like square 8 Track tapes. (If you don't know what an 8 Track tape looks like, I have no basis for relating to you, you young whipper-snapper!)

Anyway, IBM published a specification for the tapes to use, and 3M made a bunch of tapes that met that specification (we had 250,000 to start with). Problem was, the tape drives wanted to be cleaned every 25-30 hours of use! And this was not a "wipe a alcohol cloth over the head kind of clean", this was a spend 20 minutes and scrub the mechanisim type of clean. My employer got IBM to clean the drives each morning (that was one unhappy SE let me tell you) while trying to decide who was right, the drive vendor (who blamed 3M) or the tape vendor (that blamed IBM). Turns out the IBM specifications that were published did not match the specifications of IBMs own tapes, which did not cause the machines to require such frequent cleanings.

SO what di IBM do? They kept cleaning the drives, provided 3M with the proper specifications, and worked with 3M to provide us with replacement tapes that met the new specs. This took over a month.

IBM never complained - even as my employer was installing their first Amdhal system (it had PR/SM, the ability to run multiple system images on one physical machine, without the added overhead of VM - PR/SM was a hardware solution. Each hardware partition could even have a different microcode loaded.).

IBM admitted their error, did what it took to make the customer happy, and earned their money. There are other vendors that would do the same, but they are the exception, not the rule, in this industry.

Ken
(oh, and my favorite MVS utility that actually did something, was one that would generate random data, based on some control cards, as much as you wanted. That was cool - you could make up test data sets in almost no time!)
-----Original Message-----

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Message: 6
From: "Will Jennings" <xds_sigma7 at hotmail.com>
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: Re: [SunRescue] Tape drive
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 09:47:11 -0600
Reply-To: rescue at sunhelp.org

Don't forget that an IBM carries with it 40+ years of building computers... 
and the knowledge that they're not going to go under tomorrow, and you also 
know that, depending on your contract, they WILL fix any bugs you might 
encounter, hell you can pay em to move the equipment for you. I own a good 
number of AS/400, System/36, 4300, and 8100 stuff, and its damn well made. 
Hell, I have AS/400 stuff that was in a rack that literally got kicked out 
the back door onto its side.. and all the disk drives are still good!