IBM Engineers

Reminds me of the time a system manager at a place I was working ordered a failed servoid off the site. He wanted to replace every PCB in some expensive piece of equipment because they all failed diagnositcs. I'd just turned up, slapped a meter on the 5V line and found it was sitting at 4.2V.... On which planet have you been living for the last 20 years???? I've never met a field servoid who had any sort of clue whatsoever about the operation and troubelshooting of computers -- they just replace seemingly random parts until the fault goes away. Certainly I've never seen oue use a multimeter, let alone a 'scope... Needless to say I am not happy about this, this is no way to fix a computer. I've given the arguments many times before, so suffice it to say you'll never trace an intermittant fault that way. And you may not even correctly diagnose a steady fault (if module A has gone out of tolerance, then replacing module B (which is still good) with one that's got a slightly different margin might get the machine working again -- that is untile A drifts some more. Seen it happen!). I was once taught that the really good troubleshooter is the guy who makes some measurements, thinks _a lot_ about the problem, and then replacees exactly one part, and the machine works again for 10 more years. I am not that good! And don't give me the crap that proper troubleshooting is too expensive. Firstly, the modern way flatly doesn't work!. I've lost count of the number of times a machine has had to be 'repaired' several times for the same fault because the idiot servoid hadn't a clue about what was really wrong. All that downtime costs money!. And I am also not convinced that replacing rather than repairing a PCB is the way to go. I've also lost count of the number of times an expensive motherboard -- say in a workstation -- has been replaced for a serial port problem. Anyone with half a brain could find the dead buffer chip in 5 minutes, even without schematics. And it would take not much longer to solder in a replacement. Oh, what the heck... Here's a filk that might cheer you up... This is dedicated to all those who called out DEC field service for a simple problem, and wished you hadn't.......... It was on a Monday morning The DEC man came to call, My system wouldn't boot There was no prompt at all He pulled out all my SPC's To try a new backplane And I had to get the hardware guys to put them back again Oh it all makes work for field service men to do! It was on a Tuesday morning The hardware man came round He soldered and he fiddled And he said 'Look what I've found' 'Your ECOs are years behind' 'But I'll put it all to rights' Then he shorted out the power supply and out went all the lights Oh it all makes work for field service men to do! It was on a Wednesday morning The power supply came 'It's newer and it's better' 'But it works just the same' He could not fit the unit without stripping half the rack then he dropped my boot HDA so He called Peripherals back Oh it all makes work for field service men to do! It was on a Thursday morning The HDA came along with a blocklist and a cable and a list of what goes wrong He put it into my drive It took no time at all But I had to get the software guys to come and re-install Oh it all makes work for field service men to do It was on a Friday morning That Software made a start With BACKUP and SYSGEN He configured every part Every track and every sector But I found when he was gone He had overwritten the boot track and I couldn't turn it on On saturday and Sunday They do no work at all So It was on a Monday morning that the DEC man came to call -tony