Miniscribe "bricks" (was Re: Common Maxtor MFM drive failure mode -- any ideas?)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10/23/2015 02:49 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>> From: Pierre Gebhardt
>
>> Haha, I guess you're alluding to the massive scam with the bricks,
>> Miniscribe did back them to pretend stocks full of disk drives...
>
> Never heard the story. Can someone oblige?
>
>> BTW, are there any other similar stories from the disk drive
>> buisiness back in these days?
>
> I don't know about disk drives, but there are lot of scam stories.
> One minicomputer manufacturer (sorry, don't remember who, but I think
> it was on the 128 belt) was shipping empty cabinets, in order to meet
> projections (I dunno if they couldn't afford the parts to build the
> guts, or if their manufacturing division couldn't build the stuff, or
> what).

Oh, bricks aren't even necessary now that the sharp-pencil guys are 
running the show.  You create a corporate shell hidden under 
god-knows-what-layer of-legal-foo, then loan it the funds to purchase 
the product.

Enron did this--and so did Lucent under Carly Fiorina.  Great for 
inflating revenue figures.

--Chuck