IBM Thingy strikes again!

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Thu Jan 21 01:49:02 1999

For anyone that cares, I just got this from IBM .


>
>Joe,
>I talked to one of the Field Engineers tonight who know what your THING is.
>Believe it or not it is a piece of test equipment that is used to diagnose
>several different types of IBM equip. AND it is still used today. In fact
>he said I was sitting next to 2 of them this morning when I was in the CE
>office!! They are used to test devices like 3380, 3480, 3490 Disk drives.
>These drives are the humongo mainframe drives ( they stand over 6' tall)
>although they are very old technology. He also said that the device is used
>to diagnose communication problems between remote controllers and the main
>system. He also said that as a stand alone device it is pretty much
>worthless....unless you want to copy diskettes...but I don't know of too
>many people who need 8" diskettes copied!. He was surprised that you
>"found" one. He said that it could have been left behind at a clients
>location by a repair person and forgotten about.....or the CE's use to keep
>them in the trunks of their cars and it could have been taken from one. I
>asked him what you might be able to do with it...he said (jokingly) that one
>option would be to sell it to a competitive maintenance company (like bell
>Atlantic) who would want them so that they could service IBM hardware.??


>>
>> I powered up the THING today. It says it's a Stand Alone Terminal
>>Exorciser, PN 08309930, date 01/84. It passes the self test and brings up a
>>menu that lets you select 327X Tutorial, 327X BSC, SDLC/SNA or R-LOOP.
>>Selecting the R-LOOP option brings up another menu for 8775 Device or 3276
>>Device. That's as far as I can get in the menu, after that it asks for a CU
>>address or will autoscan for it but of course there's nothing connected so
>>it doesn't find what ever it's looking for. Do you think you can find any
>>more about it?
>>
>>
>> Joe
>>
Received on Thu Jan 21 1999 - 01:49:02 GMT