"It's not working, I need a new one".

"Is it definitely broken? It might still be repairable"

"I'll just check"

* pushing/sliding/falling/hard landing/breaking noises *

"No, it's definitely broken beyond repair".

It's the terminal form of percussive maintenance/a.k.a. put old kit out of our misery

I used to carry in my toolkit a white headed rubber mallet for HDs that weren't quite failed _yet_...

Well played by Loudon! A bumpy road is clearly a good replacement for the BOFH's panel-beating hammer of [1]yore .

Somehow I am thinking of a dead skunk in the middle of the road now. Wonder why

[1] http://bofharchive.com/1998/bastard98-21.html

Not quite IT but inevitably under our remit...

Previous company had two paper shredders, an elderly strip shredder and a much newer, and more secure, cross cut one.

Payslips were still produced on a matrix printer as a printed top sheet with the actual secure NCR slip underneath so the top sheet was split off. The top sheets were kept as a strip for the required period then a year's worth would be shredded in one go, which was where the argument started. Firstly the newer shredder would only take one sheet of paper at a time and frequently jammed - that was easily sorted by actually lubricating the thing which I discovered hadn't been done in several years. The second complaint was it would only run continuously for a few hours a day - well it was only a 50% duty cycle!

Because of these issues they absolutely insisted they would use the old shredder for the job. It was pointed out that it was insecure, and the Company would be liable under the (relatively new) Data Protection Act* since it was easy to piece the paper back together again, but the payroll people were adamant. The old shredder happened to be in the wrong building though and needed moving about 100 yards so a couple of the shop floor were enlisted for the job. Now I'm not saying they did drop it deliberately, and I'm not saying they didn't, but the end result was some bent components and loud graunching sounds when it was turned on - result achieved!

*A company had recently been fined due to a lack of an adequate shredding policy when an employee "happened" to find a copy of his payslip in a black rubbish bag. Everyone was certain it was a stitch-up but it cost a few thousand pounds.

So do you know who slipped the Shop Floor guys a couple of notes to perform the impromptu permanent deactivation?

Yes, but the notes were shredded for security purposes.

Just put forth less effort to fix it everytime it goes down. Something breaks, tell them "I will need to go onto the internet to research this problem" and take advantage of the quiet time that will afford you to catch up on your email or other paperwork. Then you go ahead and fix it, but warn them that information about troubleshooting and fixing such obsolete hardware is becoming more and more difficult to find so it will probably take longer and longer for you to fix it each time it breaks.

If they don't learn their lesson after a few times doing this, next time just fully work on the other responsibilities of your job and totally ignore their ancient equipment. Tell them "I'm waiting for a call back from a retired engineer who is the only guy I've found who has said he's seen this problem and may know what to do". After being down for half a week, you can fix it and tell them how lucky they are that guy finally contacted him because you never would have been able to solve it without his help. Maybe subtly remind them that if you were hit by a bus and they have to hire a replacement finding someone who has even what little experience with that obsolete hardware you do will be very expensive since they are all either retired or moved on to more lucrative fields.

Having regularly had to take them in flight cases on transatlantic journeys, the disk packs themselves were remarkably robust - not entirely surprising given the rather low information density.

I'm sure the sheer weight of the actual drives being manoeuvred over rough ground (assuming you could summon up the necessary effort) would quickly throw the heads out of alignment, but they were otherwise quite [1]solidly built [The box with the switches is a CDC TB216 Field Test Unit, not a Digital computer, the basic drives were supplied by CDC].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttelBz4Td_E

That was my first thought. A lot of those old drives could have been pushed down a flight of stairs and would have been fine after a polish and head alignment.

The 256MB packs (RM05s?) were relabelled CDC kit, was the RM03?

There was a point where the maintenance costs associated with this type of equipment and even just the cost of re-commissioning would be more than potentially moving to newer equipment, heck even the electrical consumptions costs could probably make a business case!

electrical consumptions costs could probably make a business case

RM03s had power sequencing cables to ensure that only one would start up at a time - the surge currents were pretty substantial (22A @240V) until the motors came up to speed. In standby, they consumed 3.5A @240V and while active around 7A. For 67MB.

The 256MB packs (RM05s?) were relabelled CDC kit, was the RM03?

You can find the RM02/3 service manual [1]here which cross-references the DEC and CDC part numbers.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all of the "washing machine" stye drives were from OEMs.

[1] http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/disc/rm03/EK-RM023-SV-001_RM02_03_Service_Jun78.pdf

I'm pretty certain all the ones I worked with said DEC on the front and CDC inside!

We did have one person who didn't want to loose his personal Laser jet printer despite being told that the orders had come from on high.

If he was a better user we might have been slower to respond...

We did a guerrilla run into his office at night. used a strip of black insulation tape over the laser unit /fuser (I can't remember which).

He came down the next day with a printout with one column missing. We took the printer away for "repairs" and was never seen again

I'm going to hope it was the laser unit - or the imaging drum. Having spent a happy half hour last year peeling gooey plastic labels off a modern fusing belt, I can only begin to imagine the smell of insulating tape getting smeared around an oldschool fuser!

Mid-2000's, a colleague had got back from some international travel and had been complaining the hard drive in his laptop was making a lot of dodgy sounds, and laptop was running slow, and that it needed replacing. IT told him it needed to be reviewed before the drive could be swapped, and someone would be round lunchtime to check it over.

He decided to perform his own check. He pulled the drive out of the laptop - this was a Dell laptop. I seem to remember you could unclip the drive out quite easily, just like the batteries. A Latitude model maybe? - He started off by shaking the drive up to his ear, and then proceeded to SLAM it down on the desk a few times. He then held it up and shook it again.

"Yup, it's definitely got a rattle to it. I think it's knackered".

Cue all the surprised faces when IT came to check the laptop and it couldn't boot off the drive. Replacement drive provided post haste!

> you might expect that an aerospace corporation would want to be at the pointy end of technological innovation

Many aircraft have a service life of 20 years or more, so the IT kit at the manufacturer has to be compatible with what the customers have. It's probably the same for industrial or medical systems.

I recall getting a task to create some update floppies (single sided/single density IIRC) for distribution in the days when CDs were the standard. Finding a system with a suitable drive was the hard part. Then working out file formats. Then testing the update mechanism on a multi-million dollar test aircraft (gulp).

Yep, basically if there's an aircraft still flying you HAVE to keep all the records, models, drawings, etc. You can attempt to bring them up to a newer standard, but budgets rarely extend that far, and automated systems are a nightmare (as my Firm found out when they decided to transition from CATIA V5 to Siemens NX - basically for anything that's going to be modified in the future, it's easier and quicker just to remodel from scratch in NX, than to try and wrangle the conversion into shape...).

I still remember in my first job many moons ago, when CATIA V5 was the new Airbus standard (mid 2000's), that there were still at least a few people working daily on terminals running an early version of CADDS (cant remember which version but easily mid 80's if not older). At least the old Airbus rule was to stick to one CAD/PLM system for the entire length of the Aircraft project (so A400M was the first to move to CATIA V5, before that it was V4). No idea if that rule is still in place...

When I left a company in that arena 5 years ago, there was still a repair technical who would demonstrate repairing core memories yearly.

I wasn't allowed to know how many she repaired, but I did see her records for the demonstration/practice for the last 30 years.

I used to be friends with someone who worked with some machines called "Deltas". The company was bought out and they were told all IT work had to be done by the new owner's IT department.

So my friend had one of their guys come out and look at the deltas in their racks. Guy looks at one and asks basically "what the fuck is that?"

"That's a delta."

Guy takes out a form and starts to fill in the details... "does it have a serial number?"

"X00001, the X is for eXperimental"

Guy looks at him, and then asks "How many of these are there?"

"5, X00001 to X00005"

"How many were built?"

"5..."