[fa.info-vax] Vax reliability

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/21/84)

From: medin@ucbarpa.BERKELEY (Milo Medin)


I just brought up a 730 recently, converting it from VMS to 4.2 unix.  DEC
had said the thing had passed the acceptance checks, but when I tried to boot
up 4.2 the tape wouldnt go.  So I brought up VMS again and found it wouldn't
work there either.  We took it aprt and found out the unibus extender
cable was improperly installed.  Then we found DEC hadnt hooked the
power controllers up right, so we rewired it and it all gets switched
from the front panel.  This is all after DEC replaced the memory controller
and unibus cabling before they turned it over to us.  This made
me curious so I asked the folks who know about vaxen here and they
told me better than 25% of the vaxes arriving here at Ames do so
DOA!  I've never seen a vt100 terminal work completely well out of
the box, and the pro-350 has lots of problems with screen alignment
as well.  Are we here at NASA getting poor QC or is it all over?
I would think a company having that much trouble with QC couldnt
stay in business long.  One thing about IBM, the computers work
when they tell you its working, tho I detest the way the things
go.  Sigh, I have a new 750 on order, I hope that at least works,
its just a CPU, nothing else.  Thats not asking for too much I think...


					Milo Medin
					Telecommunications Office
					NASA Ames Research Center
					Moffett Field, CA

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/23/84)

From: decvax!ittvax!keegane@BERKELEY

Our experience has been totally the opposite here at ITT.
We have a number of VAXen, all flavors, uVAX thru 780's.
Got the MicroVAX a month ago, unpacked it, powered it up,
ran diagnostics, brought up ULTRIX-32m (beta-test) and its
been running ever since.  Typically, we've had no QC problems
with DEC.  I'm an ex-DECie and I would raise this issue with
your DEC District Marketing and Field Service persons to make
sure that DEC manufacturing gets the word that your site is
experiencing more that its share of QC problems.

keegane%UCB-VAX@ittvax.UUCP (10/23/84)

From: decvax!ittvax!keegane@Berkeley

Our experience has been totally the opposite here at ITT.
We have a number of VAXen, all flavors, uVAX thru 780's.
Got the MicroVAX a month ago, unpacked it, powered it up,
ran diagnostics, brought up ULTRIX-32m (beta-test) and its
been running ever since.  Typically, we've had no QC problems
with DEC.  I'm an ex-DECie and I would raise this issue with
your DEC District Marketing and Field Service persons to make
sure that DEC manufacturing gets the word that your site is
experiencing more that its share of QC problems.

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/23/84)

From: medin@ucbarpa.BERKELEY (Milo Medin)

Thanks, I will do that, I found this kind of service very poor, I didnt think
many people other than the govt would take it.

					Milo

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/30/84)

From: decvax!genrad!bolton!garry@BERKELEY (Garry Baer)

	develop your own expertise in-house.  Any vendor has the same problem
depending how comptent the guy is doing the installation.