Re: Symbolics Service Issues

["Richard P. Welty" <welty%lewis.crd.ge.com@RELAY.CS.NET>]

From: JERRY%FRIDAY.A-T.COM%CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU%YMIR.BITNET@warbucks.ai.sri.com

  If you must build hardware that is so mysterious, you can reduce costs by
  eliminating the pattern by admitting that it exists and when it is recognized
  out in the field (by a problem machine which persists for a week), you can
  immediately swap the board set for some sort of tested, verified board set.

this won't get all problems, though.  our disk error problems finally
have a resolution in sight, but we replaced an entire 3600 one piece
at a time, until our FE finally substituted a 3670 i/o board in the
machine.  once we're sure, then we're going to have to put a 3670 or
3640 i/o board in all of the troublesome 3600 fileservers (one 3600
has been having disk problems for nearly 3 years at this point.)
i can't imagine any complete board swap of one 3600 set for another
3600 set solving the problem.

substitute 3650s?  i wish -- there isn't any money around for that
these days.  everybody in the upper levels of the budget process at
GE R&D wants Suns, Suns, and more Suns (except for the odd manager
or two who want DEC or IBM solutions.)

enough rambling,
  richard welty