Data & Telecom Miscommunications

Anyone can blog, "we're installing this system today, we're cabling in this town tomorrow, etc...". I thought it would be an interesting change to tell some of my interesting adventures throughout the years installing equipment and providing service on Avaya telephone systems, networking, cabling & IBM mainframes.

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Diversity - From IBM Mainframes to Avaya Telephones Systems

Diversity will be the topic for my next few blogs, due to some conversations I have had with my 18 year old son. I had asked him what he wants to do in life. He is, after all 18 years old, his last year of high school almost complete. My son told me that he’s going to be diverse, knowledgeable, and ready to tackle anything, just like me. It took me a bit to look back at what I have done to achieve this high praise from my son. Then, I had to explain to my son, that you can be very diverse in what you do, but be an expert in "something". You can be too diverse and not know anything, just enough to get you into trouble. So I went on to reminice with my son about how I happened to be where I am now. A solid education is key, but my best teacher has been experience. I set out with the basics and build on that foundation.

BACKGROUND
My dad had been in the Navy and had worked on electronics. He then went on to work at Zenith. As a boy, he would bring me home Zenith Heathkits (does anyone remember those?), and I would build those kits by myself. I'm very electronically/mechanically inclined. Yep, rebuilt car engines too, just like my dad. He was good at everything, if I remember correctly. In my heart, I hope I take after him!

MAINFRAMES
I started as an entry level repair technician for a company that made word processing systems. As I recall, these were mechanical and electronic typewriters with a 1 x 80 character led display that could also store a 1 page document on a magnetic card reader. Absolutely amazing at that time! Two of the techs I worked with, left the company and were hired by a computer firm, which I learned paid very well and was still recruiting.

I got an interview and on that day, I had come down with the flu and was quite ill. Besides missing 4 of 5 locations that tested my ability to find the correct contact on a board with thousands... well, I guess the suit must have impressed them because I was hired. So, began my experience with mainframe computers. Some thought I had a great job with the image of lab coats and clean rooms. Not even close. Mainframes were mechanical monstrosities that were quite filthy from circulating the dirt of their surroundings. For my first 6 months the techs there thought I was a copy boy, since all I was doing was copying instructions and pages of diagrams that would be part of the work to be done upgrading mainframes.

It took time, but eventually I was able to assist other techs on jobs and in no time I was travelling by myself to do upgrades. In my second year I was still “green” to many machines but to do was to learn. By my 8th year, I had been to all but 2 states and worked in 9 countries. I actually only had one instructor led training session where I went to New Jersey for a class on tape drives, which I did very well on. On returning from this week long class, I walked into the office and was handed a box of parts and a plane ticket to go work on a disk drive at the NRA in Washington DC. Only just figuring out what a tape drive does, I was thrown into a task of installing a feature on a disk drive which, at that time, I knew very little about. With parts and instructions I started to add the components to the disk drives controller and even had a bad part which I discovered thru diagnostics and had to go out to the local distribution to get a replacement. I actually received my first letter of accommodation from this client.

There was one incident that stands out to me because it taught me the best lesson on self-reliance. I had again just started to work on a 3158 computer which I was adding a feature to in Boston, I think. The work would take about 6 hours to do. Once I finished the changes, I needed to test the system to be sure everything worked properly. During the tests, a diagnostic failure occurred, which sent me to look up the error and figure out what was wrong. Being relatively new in many aspects of the system, I was following thru manuals and looking at logic diagrams (schematics) to analyze the problem but was unable to get the tests to complete. After several hours of effort, I called for assistance. What I received was a slap to my face at the time, as my tech support leader decided to tell me to read the @#$! books and to call back when I @#$! well figured it out and fixed it. As it happens, that was the best advice I’d ever received and from that day, I rarely called tech support again. I did fix the problem that day and went on to fix many others. Each one would teach me more about the system and how it is supposed to work.

Then I moved on and started my first company with my brother, a mainframe memory (we produced our own memory) & service company. We eventually parted ways, and I started my own mainframe memory, service & maintenance company. The last mainframe I touched, was one I took out for the University of Illinois in 2003, which had the last memory product I had made for mainframes still in the machine - end of an era. If anyone is interested, here is an old product sheet for that memory.

For larger JPG size, click on image.

We decided to get out of the mainframe industry, and went on to networking. Stay tuned for that addition to this blog soon!

GB
12/31/2009

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