On May 18, 7:37, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> And it must also be remembered that these folks did this when it was
> economically feasible to spend a day or two tracking down and
repairing a
> problem. Business is time, and time is money, so as technology
evolved
> and came down in price, it became more practical to just swap boards
(both
> for the user and the supplier).
>
> Sometimes we lose a sense of the more pragmatic aspects of tech work.
If
> your business is halted because a computer system is down, would you
> rather your tech take a few hours or a day or two to track down and
fix a
> problem, or would you rather they swap a few boards in an hour or so
until
> they find the problem?
It's also worth pointing out that by the '80s, some of the boards
required diagnostics and equipment that it wasn't practical for every
field service guy to carry. A lot of companies did as the one I worked
for: field service engineers were trained (quite carefully) to pin a
problem down to a board, replace that, and send the faulty one to their
central workshop (ours was in Stoke) where it would be repaired and
tested. There's nothing wrong with swapping a board providing you know
which to swap (implying "why", at some level) and the faulty one gets
fixed (assuming it's economic).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Received on Tue May 18 2004 - 12:16:24 BST