[Info-vax] Current VMS engineering quality, was: Re: What's VMS up to these

[Paul Sture]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:13:26 -0700, Bart Zorn wrote:

> On Sunday, March 18, 2012 2:16:18 PM UTC+1, Paul Sture wrote:
>
>> The VT52 had some kind of power problem though.  They would die at
>> regular intervals and it took something like 45 minutes of disassembly
>> to replace the affected part, followed by another 45 minutes of
>> reassembly.
>> 
>> We were glad when VT100s came along.
> 
> To keep our 8 VT52's running we had a DEC Field Circus guy on-site for
> about 3 days each week. That was back in 1978. Unfortunately, our
> experience with the VT100 was only a little bit better. We switched to
> C-Itoh CIT101 and later CIT224 which were much better quality.
> 

We started with 4 VT52s and by the time it came for a major system 
upgrade and more terminals, the VT100s were available.  Yes, the Field 
Circus terminal and printer guy was a regular visitor, but nothing like 
as bad as 3 times a week.  We really hammered those dot matrix printers.

I don't recall problems with the VT100s, but anyway they were much easier 
to get into and fix.

"Preventative maintenance" on the main PDP was always a pain though, and 
often resulted in calling the engineer back a couple of hours after he 
had left.  We were relieved when DEC changed the schedule from monthly to 
quarterly.

-- 
Paul Sture