Micropolis hdd

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwightk.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Mon Oct 28 16:05:00 2002

>From: "Eric Smith" <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
>
>> I can't find it online anymore, but about two years ago I stumbled
>> across this fascinating article which discussed the demise of
>> Micropolis, presenting it as a case study of business fraud.
>>
>> My favorite highlight had to do with Micropolis claiming much larger
>> inventories of hard drives than they actually had. This was to make the
>> company look as if it were more valuable. This excess inventory was
>> primarily made up of a special class of hard drive, which in the company
>> records were listed as "very hard drives". In reality they were bricks
>> that had been boxed in Micropolis packaging.
>
>Micropolis had their own problems, but I don't think we should accuse
>them with out-and-out fraud without researching it a bit further.
>The company that shipped bricks was Miniscribe, and one of their
>executives was finally convicted when it was discovered that he'd
>actually purchased the bricks on his credit card. (Note to self:
>when buying materials for an inventory scam, pay cash.)
>
>I very much doubt that any company records used the phrase "very hard
>drives", since that wasn't brought up by the prosecution in the trial.
>Sounds more like a clever phrase a reporter came up with.
>
>> Apparently a few of them were even shipped to customers.
>
>The true story may never be known, but I don't think any shipped to
>customers that weren't aware of the plan. Some customers may have
>agreed to help Miniscribe with their inventory problems (as in lack
>of), because the customer may have been more interested in the promise
>of a real drive delivered later than the company going out of business
>sooner.
>
>One of the surplus stores in the Denver area had a brick in their
>display case with their disk drives; the brink had a sign saying
>"Miniscribe 40MB". However, it was not an *actual* Miniscribe brick.
>
>Miniscribe was acquired by Maxtor and was known for a time as "Maxtor
>Colorado".
>
>The only complaint I had with Micropolis was that their drives had a
>very high failure rate.

Hi
 At the last company I was at, we never had one ( Micropolis )
complete a 1 week burnin ( at room temp ), until they fiddled with
something and the rate dropped to only about 3 out of ten
per week. I knew we were making a mistake, at the begining
when they said that they would give us free engineering
time to help use get their drives to work on our machines.
I stated such to management but was ignored.
Dwight
Received on Mon Oct 28 2002 - 16:05:00 GMT