by CodeCage » May 19th, 2022, 4:29 pm
As I remember it, and that could faulty, the Crothers Memorial Hall was the name of the dormitory that Harry Garland and Roger Melen resided in at Stanford. Am I too far off base?
Once when Harry Garland was visiting the dealer here in Georgia where I worked, he asked what was the major issue we were facing with Cromemco products. I replied, only one! We can't seem to get a 64K memory board that works reliably! He then told us to do something to destroy the ones we had that were causing us such headaches and he would sign a letter to accompany them on their return to Cromemco to be replaced. When I asked if he cared how we destroyed them, he responded, any way you wish. I took the 5 boards we had in our shop that refused to work, even though several had been returned to Cromemco on multiple occasions, out behind our shop where there was a big hill, propped them up in the dirt, grabbed a 30-06 rifle from my truck (it was hunting season) and starting filling the cards with holes! Harry even took a couple of shots himself as I remember it. The boards were replaced with a newer version that worked! I think I may even have one of those myself!
As for me getting my 8800c put together, that might not be real soon. On our test bench I usually tested IO through the 1488 and 1489 RS-232 driver chips, which seemed to have a real high failure rate if there were any nearby lightening strikes. We had one customer that had a multi-user Cromix system that had 4 TU-ART boards that took a hit on their radio tower. When they called they said all users were unable to get into the system. Upon arrival and inspection I discovered every 1488 and 1489 on the 4 boards had holes blown in them. After replacing all the 1488 and 1489 chips that had let the smoke out, they were back in business. We always kept a good supply of them in our stock.
Enough war stories! Guess I should get busy getting to the 8800c.