[rescue] Slightly OT: Bad Cap Saga

[Carl R. Friend]

    On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
>> Everyone used to [test]  memory chips. At one particular time, no
>> one made 200ms memory chips, they made 150ms ones. The ones that passed
>> testing at 150ms were sold as 150's., the ones that passed at 175 were
>> sold as 175's, the ones that passed at 200 were sold as 200's, and the
>> rest were sold as 225's.
>
> Seagate used to test all their hard disks as RLL.  The ones that passed
> were sold as RLL disks; those that failed were sold as MFM.

    This is normal procedure, but it depends on one thing that seems
to be missing today -- testing.  I have it on good authority that
Intergraph did this with the Clipper chipset -- chips that passed
the tests were sold as 10 MHz kit; those that fared worse were sold
as 9 MHz.  I'm not sure what happened with ones that may have passed
at lower clock speeds.  I have a 9 MHz specimen in my personal
collection.

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| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend at rcn.com                        +---------------------+
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