foss@iris.ucdavis.edu (Jim Alves-Foss) (12/05/89)
The following is from "San Jose Mercury News" Sat, Dec 2, 1989 page 13F
(reprinted without permission).
Miniscribe Corp. of Longmont, Colo., a troubled maker of disk drives for
personal computers, announced a major restructuring program Friday that
includes laying off of 110 employees immediately and an unspecified
number of additional workers in March.
In September, Miniscribe stunned the computer industry by releasing
results of an internal investigation that uncovered mass fraud behind
the company's apparent sales growth -- including packing bricks into
disk drive boxes and shipping the boxes to warehouses.
Q.T Wiles, former chairman of the San Francisco investment banking firm
Hambrecht & Quist, was chairman of Miniscribe from 1985 until early this
year. Through his lawyer, Wiles has denied any knowledge of wrongdoing
at the company.
On Friday, Miniscribe said it is phasing out production of 5 1/4-inch disk
drives and all but two of its existing 3 1/3-inch disk drives in order
to focus on introducing a new series of ultra-compact 3 1/2-inch drives.
The reorganization includes a $40 million write-off, which will add to
Miniscribe's negative net worth of $88 million.
Miniscribe also will cease production in the United States while
retaining manufacturing facilities in Hong Knog and Singapore. "The decision
... was the only one (Miniscribe) could make iunder the circumstances,"
the company said in a prepared statement.
Miniscribe announced the restructuring after the stock markets closed Friday.
In Over-the-Counter trading, Miniscribe closed down 13 cents at 75 cents
a share.
I hope this explains some of the rumors we've been seeing here.
-Jim Alves-Foss (foss@iris.ucdavis.edu) /* Of course these are MY opinions */
(foss@[127.120.57.20]) /* and may change without warning. */Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) (12/11/89)
I've been reading a lot of articles on the net about MiniScribe's problems, but I can say as an individual who has been purchasing a lot of their product over the last two months that their technical support has been, and continues to be, excellent to a degree that would shock me even if the company were making runaway profits. To give you a comparison: a few weeks ago I bought a CDC WREN drive and called CDC for some technical specs. I was referred to a 900 number, where for a charge of a mere $3.00 a MINUTE, a tech would (and did) answer all my questions. Compare this to my calls to MiniScribe on Friday, 12/8/89, nearly a week after they announced their re-organization. First, I was able to call an 800 number. Second, the tech was just unbelievably helpful. I needed to know what the terminating resistor looked like on a particular model of SCSI drive, and after he had problems determining this from his blueprints, he took down my business phone, went out onto the manufacturing floor, determined what the part looked like, then called me back. When we determined together that my drive lacked the part, he grabbed some parts off the floor, personally took them to the parts department (who didn't have the part), and they sent me the resistors via Federal Express at THEIR expense. And, I might add, this was past 4:00 p.m. in their time zone. Frankly, I was stunned. It's been a long time since any company has ever done something like that for me without any argument or hassle. I was thoroughly impressed, and if it's any sign of the company's overall attitude toward its customers I have to think they are going to make a comeback. Will (sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Will)
jamesd@qiclab.UUCP (James Deibele) (12/18/89)
In article <24907@cup.portal.com> Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) writes: >I've been reading a lot of articles on the net about MiniScribe's problems, >but I can say as an individual who has been purchasing a lot of their product >over the last two months that their technical support has been, and continues >to be, excellent to a degree that would shock me even if the company were >making runaway profits. I've never had to deal with their technical support (knock on wood), but I've been very pleased with the reliability of their 6085 (full-height 72MB drive). I use this to run a BBS 24 hours a day, which wouldn't be a big deal, except that I've probably run a gigabyte of mail on it. Unpack the archive, start unpacking messages, run out of room, kill some messages, renumber, unpack, etc. ... The drive is coming up on two years old without any problems. I've used their 40MB drives on previous BBS's, and I've been happy with those, too. The only complaint I've heard about Miniscribe drives is that some people think that they're too noisy. I would gladly buy Miniscribe drives again. -- James Deibele jamesd@qiclab BBSs: (503) 760-1473 or (503) 761-7451 TECHBooks: The Computer Book Specialists --- Voice: (503) 646-8257 12600 SW 1st Beaverton, OR 97005 --- Book reviewers wanted for computer science & electronics - contact us for more information.
mdapoz@hybrid.UUCP (Mark Dapoz) (12/20/89)
In article <3502@qiclab.UUCP> jamesd@qiclab.UUCP (James Deibele) writes: >I've never had to deal with their technical support (knock on wood), but I've >been very pleased with the reliability of their 6085 (full-height 72MB drive). >I use this to run a BBS 24 hours a day, which wouldn't be a big deal, except >that I've probably run a gigabyte of mail on it. I would have completely agreed with this statement last week, but unfortunately my 6085 gave out this past Sunday. The drive has been running fine for well over a year as my /usr/spool partition on my unix box. The drive typically gets about 10 meg per day going through it so it has been used quite heavily. A sticker on the drive indicates it has a manufacturing date of April 3, 1986. After spending a few hours trying to get the drive to work again, I finally figured out what had happened to it. If you remove the logic board from the drive, you will notice a small flat cable with two traces on it comming out of the hard drive (the cable ends with a small blue connector). Where the cable enters the hard drive, it runs through a plasic clip which sandwiches a rubber grommet around the cable and the aliminum case. Well, this plastic clip is held together with a torx screw going into the drive. It seems that when this particular drive was assembled, they put a little too much torque on the screw and managed to slightly crack the clip. On Sunday it seems the crack got so severe that the clip broke allowing unfiltered air to enter the hard drive. Obviously the drive stopped working shortly after that had happened. This doesn't say much for the design of the 6085! Why didn't they make such a simple clip out of metal instead of plastic! I now have a completely useless drive and lost all my news because some $0.05 piece of plastic broke. >I would gladly buy Miniscribe drives again. I probably would too but it's definatly not my first choice. -- Mark Dapoz (mdapoz@hybrid.UUCP) ...uunet!mnetor!hybrid!mdapoz I remind you that humans are only a tiny minority in this galaxy. -- Spock, "The Apple," stardate 3715.6.