I can go further. The Czech Data center received disk drives, again from Bulgaria, that were supposed to be ready for production on a Monday, when the General from the Bulgarian factory was to be there for the production demonstration, and the drives arrived Friday morning, with NO technicians, No manuals, and when they opened the covers, the Czechs discovered not one cable was connected.
And apparently, under that overall system, you were NOT allowed to complain, it was your job to take whatever you were given and be quiet, and not embarrass the Bulgarians, so the Czechs set about trying to make something work. These drives had the arm visible from above, and by late Sunday the Czechs had figured out only one thing: they could make the arm go in and out regularly. On Monday, the row of drives were lined up and ready, and when the General came to look, at drives that had never worked before, he came to attention and saluted the moving arms. About two months later, they were actually able to use the drives. Barry -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Phil Smith Sent: Monday, April 17, 2017 10:13 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Mainframe operating systems? Barry Merrill wrote: >At the Czech Tax Bureau in Brno in 1980 I saw what was described as a >Ryad clone of an IBM 145 running DOS. >They had 3420-ish 8 tape drives, and about 100 tapes in their tape >library; I think this handled only international transactions. >Two lab techs in white coats had two of the tape units open with an >oscilloscope on a rolling cart, and I was told the problem was that >they were forced to get Bulgarian tape drives, and everyone knew you >need twice as many drives - one to work and one for spare parts. Hah! A Russian expat VM guy I knew once told me much the same-read the following in a heavy Russian accent: "Vee try to run wee-em, but dese Bulgarian tape drives are s**t." When he said it, I couldn't help but picture Flintstones-style drives, with reels that aren't even round... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
