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Funny Stories ›› Funny computer stories ›› funny computer stories 036 A sales rep for a division of Control Data sold turn-key mini-computers to radio and TV stations (this was around 1979 or 1980). Our division was self-contained. We OEM’d Datapoint hardware, wrote the software, did the installation, and provided customer service both by phone and on-site. One morning I happened to be in the customer service telephone room when one of our customer service reps motioned that one of my customers was on the phone. I listened in. "That’s right, I said my disk drive is bleeding." Disk drives in those days were about 18" in diameter. A 5 Meg removable disk pack was placed in a drawer—analogous to a CD-ROM drawer—and then the data could be read off the drive. The platters were metal, covered with recordable oxide, but they were not sealed, like today’s drives. |