Re: Windows BSOD vs. AS/400

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

>  From:    WaldenL@TechSoftInc.com (Walden H. Leverich)

>  I'd say that the OS and MI have a lot to do with it, but the reason IBM can
>  control these so well is that they control the hardware. If IBM had to
>  support hardware _designed_ by 3rd parties I think the OS and MI would be
>  less stable. I know that there is 3rd party hardware (EMC jumps to mind) 
but
>  unless I'm wrong these look and smell like IBM hardware at the interface
>  level. 

Walden,

Prior to moving to AS/436, we had some EMC memory on our S/36.  The EMC 
options & guarantees were excellent.  Part of the deal was that the most 
memory you could put on our S/36 model from IBM was 7 Meg, but apparently the 
IBM structure was designed for 8 Meg & you could get it to 8 Meg & have it 
work wonderfully, if you got it from EMC.  EMC memory cost about 1/2 as much 
as IBM's & there were places offering memory for 1/2 as much again as EMC, 
but it did not come with EMC guarantees.  It was very easy to disconnect the 
EMC memory from the box in the event that a question was raised as to 
incompatibility & EMC guaranteed that if IBM billed us for a service call 
claiming that the problem was with non-IBM memory in the system, that EMC 
would reimburse us that IBM bill.

The only other time I recall that some outfit agreed to pay IBM maintenance 
bill because of their failure was when we bought a hot printer.  We had got 
several IBM peripherals from one place with the understanding that they all 
qualified for IBM maintenance & were reconditioned so that IBM maintenance 
could start on all of them immediately without any extra hassle for us.  Well 
as it turned out we did need IBM service calls within a week of their 
delivery & IBM maintenance was on everything except the paperwork had not yet 
gone through on the printer, so we called the 3rd party that sold it to us & 
they said to forward the IBM maintenance bill to them.  A week later the same 
scenario, so I called the Manager of IBM Maintenance for our region to ask 
what was the hold up on putting this printer on our service contract.

Turned out that when we get hardware, IBM checks the serial number against 
their data bases & in our case the IBM records showed that the printer that 
we had bought was on lease to some hospital in White Plains New York.  Seems 
like some new manager of a department did not like the mixture of hardware 
there & ordered trade in for a mixture that he did like.  However, he had not 
realized that some of the hardware was on lease, and not open to trade in to 
the 3rd party hardware market without checking with the leasing authority, 
let alone saving the hospital the maintenance contract fees.  Apparently this 
sort of thing happens a lot & IBM has a procedure for resolving it.

If you do not personally experience it, you not always know about stuff that 
happens a lot.  Like the time I was assigned a hotel room, and some other 
guest who was a stranger to me, was also assigned the same hotel room & when 
I got back to the office & shared the once in a blue moon story about a 
flawed implementation of hotel computer system (nothing wrong with the 
software - it was operator error & methodology soliciting operator error), I 
was told by folks who travel more than I do that this sort of thing happens 
all the time.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies
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