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From: stevesu@bronze.UUCP (Steve Summit)
Newsgroups: net.news.config
Subject: DEC repairman jokes
Message-ID: <770@bronze.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Sep-83 22:30:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: bronze.770
Posted: Thu Sep 22 22:30:32 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Sep-83 23:41:25 EDT
References: utcsstat.1094
Lines: 41

I had DEC field service install a new backplane in an expansion
box for the 11/44 I maintained while I was at MIT.  I invited him
out so he could check out what equipment he'd need.  He said (a
lot like Robert Redford in The Sting) "SureHellYeahFine" and
showed up a week later with the wrong backplane and no mounting
hardware.  A week later he was back with the right backplane but
still no hardware.  He ran off to another computer center on
campus, scrounged some hardware, and got the backplane in.  We
connected up a unibus extension cable, threw some boards into the
new backplane, and powered it up.  The CPU hung.  We decided the
power supply voltages must be wrong so he rearranges some of the
connectors on the power supply (this enormous 200 pound thing
that sounds like an airplane taking off and could probably power
one), powered it up, and the cpu hung again.  He rearranges more
connectors.  Still hung.  He pulls out a vom (for the first time)
and actually checks some backplane voltages.  He doesn't think
they look quite right.  He whips out a small screwdriver and
begins rearranging the pins in the power supply connectors.  I'm
just looking on in horror.  (Fortunately the boards have been
removed by now.)  Still no go.  He opens up the '44 and begins
comparing voltages.  (He never did dig out any document that said
emphatically which voltage should be where.  Strictly
trial-and-error.)  He rearranges more pins.  Still no go.  By
this time he begins to suspect the unibus cable and runs off to
yet another computer center and borrows one.  Still doesn't work.
Eventually we discover that the boards are in the backplane
backwards (unibus coming in at the end of the bus where the
terminator should be, and vice versa).  He hadn't thought it
would matter.

Actually, he's a nice enough guy and I feel an itsy bit guilty
cutting him down like this, but he just looked hysterically
incompetent sitting there prying pins out of connector blocks and
trying new permutations and combinations.  DEC is giving MIT
millions of dollars worth of computer equipment over the next few
years, along with permanent on-site field service reps, and this
guy will be one of them.

                                   Steve Summit
                                   Tektronix, Inc.
                                   tektronix!tekmdp!bronze!stevesu