Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!ima!bbn!apple!baum
From: baum@Apple.COM (Allen J. Baum)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: A Recently Heard Story About Seymour Cray
Message-ID: <22076@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 12 Dec 88 18:04:20 GMT
References: <90@stanton.TCC.COM> <2054@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU>
Reply-To: baum@apple.UUCP (Allen Baum)
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 21

[]
>In article <2054@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU> nlp@vu-vlsi.UUCP (Nick Pine) writes:
>In article <90@stanton.TCC.COM> donegan@stanton.TCC.COM (Steven P. Donegan) writes: ...Seymour Cray story...
>Well, I don't know. By the way, can you confirm or deny these:
>  ...more apocryphal S. Cray stories...
>	3. SC visited a beta site for a large (6600?) computer which was having
>           problems, listened to descriptions of those problems, which had
>	   plagued everyone for weeks, ordered everyone out of the computer
>	   room, sat for 2 hours and 21 minutes, called everyone back in, and
>	   said "change THIS wire," pointing to a schematic, and went back to
>	   Chippewa Falls. The change was made, and the problem was solved.


These sound like the stories told about Norbert Weiner, father of cybernetics
and the ultimate absent-minded professor. The story I heread was extremely
similar-- he heard the symptoms over the phone and told them to open up some
chassis and they'd find a mouse that had crawled in and gotten itself
electrocuted. So, guess what they found......
--
		  baum@apple.com		(408)974-3385
{decwrl,hplabs}!amdahl!apple!baum