27 Aug
1998
27 Aug
'98
8:36 a.m.
ObFolklore: working customer support, I got a
complaint that the RA81's at
a university were dying at a rate of 1 per month. Our customer complained
to DEC about the reliability but were told "those drives have a 50,000 MTBF".
They had enough drives that DEC predicted a failure every few weeks. Needless
to say, the university upgraded to a different drive as soon as possible.
ObSupposedFact: The reason for the failure was contamination on head 13 caused
by a vendor (without DEC's OK) changing the clue that held the pressure
equalization filter in place. The new glue had specs similar to the old
discontinued glue, with one difference: the new one would liquify and
flow at high temperatures. The DEC HDA's before the glue change
were pretty good. The ECO's released up until them were mostly
electronics changes. The contamination caused major failures on drives
just out of factory and it took a while for the analysis
to point out the glue.
Bill
who used to work for DEC and made a lot of OT swapping HDA's.
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