JUNE 1978

Garbage In Garbage Out

• This issue is dedicated to the fathers, old and new: the first fathers of DPI, the proud new daddies in the field, and NCR--our father of two years.
• Starting this month is a series on applications justification. These short articles and case histories were prepared by a DPI user to justify the system to his management.
• Sometime in July, I'll be moving to Bldg. 4B. My phone extension, which is now listed on the Marketing roster, will be 322. Until that move is made, however, you're better off asking the switchboard for me by name.
• The new office and phone no. came with an "upgrade" to Marketing Promotion Specialist. (Translation: Sales promotion, IMAGE, customer visits, trade shows and exhibits. The position reports to Bill Henry, Director of Marketing Support). As a result, IMAGE will only be published every other month. (That's why there wasn't a May issue. I'll bet you all thought my April Fools' joke was serious, didn't you?)
• Happy Daddy's Day to all qualified persons. And Happy Independence Day to everyone. (Better a late issue than no issue at all, right?)

June 26, 1976 NCR Corp. Acquires Data Pathing Inc.

• Two whirlwind years have passed since DPI's proud parent made that announcement. It's about time for a bit of tear-Jerking nostalgia. Sit back. Relax. It's story time.
• On April 22, 1964, founders Roy Score, Ed Merseth, Bill Bridge, Jim Jepson, Peggy Rutherford and Roger Mosher became officers of Data Pathing Incorporated . There were other founders, too: the late James L. Pike, inventor of our card scanning technique. And a mad scientist from La Jolla, California who, when he died, left DPI with nothing but a book of undecipherable equations for a 64-bit machine.
• These people's ideas are the basis of the concepts and attitudes of DPI today. But, you can't run a corporation on ideas. The money had to come from somewhere. Legend has it that one of the original stockholders was the local barber from Los Altos. Later, Allstate Insurance showed their faith in DPI after seeing nothing but a cardboard mock-up of the 1204.
• DPI's initial prospect for a factory system was Douglas Aircraft. After an evaluation, Douglas decided to "wait a few years to see if the company would make it." Ten years later, McDonnell Douglas became one of DPI's first and largest MIT installations.
• Assets Administration's Jim Musser was the first employee of DPI. When hired in July of '64, Jim handled Personnel, Purchasing and Payroll . (Mable Kenoyer took Payroll off Jim's hands a short time later, and she stills does it today.)
• Jim vividly recalls the "early" days. "It was a hand-to-mouth existence for a long time. But the people had faith . "The whole concept of DPI was so outrageous for that time, we stuck around to see if it would work."
• "G.E. Bloomington purchased the first system we ever built. That's probably because they had faith in our engineers--most of them came from G.E. Phoenix." Jim chuckled at that memory. "When G.E.'s check arrived with the Saturday morning 'occupant' mail, everybody breathed easier."
• Although Jim was employee #1, Don Birmingham, VP of Business Development, holds the title for longest consecutive employment. Don came aboard in September of '65. The 1204 is Don's baby--he did the original design and specification. In cohorts with Jim Pike, they drove the first 1204 scanners with fishing line.
• Now, Don's office is a museum. Next to his antique timeclock (made in Birmingham, England, of all places), is a 1204 Mark I. He plans to turn it into a slot machine.
• The "war stories" could go on for pages. Like the one about demonstrating the new 1304 at Silverado. To show how light it was, Don threw it up and caught it. The engineers turned green and prayed for the strength of the scotch tape that was holding the internal components in place.
• In the past 14 years, a lot of people have come and gone and come again. The saying goes, "Everybody comes back to DPI." Is it true? Ask the father of DCOS, Bill "Bytecracker Nut" Hill. Or what about the Red Baron, Ted Spitzmiller? Or Billy Goodner, Carey Kelley and the rest?
• DPI has been rich in character(s), imagination, dedication and success. Our impressive list of 200+ customers worldwide adds an exclamation point to our name.
• Happy Father's Day, NCR!

WACK-O-DAF-Y-NITIONS:

• kludge/kluj (origin unknown): a system and esp. a computer system made up of components that are poorly matched or were orig. intended for some other use. --Websters
• bounce pass: put a control block on another module's queue. --ETF
• out-a-da-middle: removal of a control block from any place in a queue. --ETF

And Now For Something Completely Different:
PROCEDURE FOR FE TO DIAGNOSE DRUM HALTS

• 4/20/78 (Phrog: This is a misguided SYSTEMS article . Don't let it fool you.)
• The need for a procedure 1ike the one below was raised by Jim Novacek. Larry Hofmann responded.
• 1. See if halt is a drum halt. Look for:
  PC=66/327 M=0/O (true for DCOS IV, Rel. 7 or 8)
  If the above is not true, the rest of the procedure does not apply .
• 2. Record registers and take dump.
• 3. If F register=l, go to step 6.
• 4. F register should be 2 thru 6. Error is hardware, indicated by value in F:
  • 2 - Data error
  • 3 - A11 records not transferred
  • 4 - Drum not ready
• 5. Read contents of memory at 66/216 thru 66/221. This is command on which the error occurred. Decode as illustrated in the FE handbook to determine: drum, track, and cylinder, memory address, command, and number of sectors to be transferred. Save for site history and/or comparison with FE diagnostics. Go to step 7.
• 6. This type of error can be hardware or software. Call your site SE.
• 7. Run diagnostics.

Dateline:  April 6, 1978
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA

By Jr. Correspondent Bill Harber, Esquire

• An extremely productive meeting of the Mid-Atlantic district SEs was held on Hilton Head Island, a small Atlantic paradise. Special guests were Don Lincicome of Sunnyvale and SE Manager Gerry Wyatt.
• An open discussion on the definition of a DPI SE, and his duties and responsibilities aided the managers in developing job descriptions.
• In addition to regular business, monkey business consisted of chasing small round objects across large green fields, deep sandy pits and watery graves. Don Lincicome quickly learned not to retrieve his golf balls from the water hazards; the floating logs had eyes.
• (Phrog: IMAGE receives some pretty raunchy articles, but Jr. Correspondent Harber's takes the cake. Having no paper available, Bill scratched out his report on an airline motion sickness bag. IMAGE thinks it was hint that the editor might need to use it after reviewing Bill's article.)

FIELD ENGINEERING

FEs Got Class
by Mr. Peripheral

Class #52

• (Phrog: A special note to Class #53--I'm sorry I missed saying goodbye. You guys were a pleasure to get to know.)
• It's time to reveal the names of the mystery field creatures that made up FE Class #53. Funny, but when students arrive, they're boisterous and rarin' to go. After much hard work, studying, writing programs, taking tests, etc., it usually becomes necessary to send them home on stretchers. Class #53 decided to take their lives in their own hands by challenging the Sunnyvale men's softball team to a beer game (See Sports column for story). Actually, the Trainees turned out to be better technicians than ball players.
• Several presentations were made at the FE Trainee Award Luncheon. The Outstanding Achievement Award went to Tom Alvey. His excellent work and determined study habits helped all members of the class.
• The Outstanding Team Achievement Award went to the occupants of 0106, which was by far the noisiest apartment. Members of the super-compatible team were Jeff Jansen, Denny Schraibman, Pat Shofner and Wild Man Yarnall.
• Besides becoming versed in DPI technology, this class gained an expertise in the art of chandelier usage.
• A list of the graduating class and their sites follows. Let's all "pitch" in and welcome these guys to the field.

CENTRAL REGION

• Thomas Alvey - Naval Weapons, Crane, IN
• Robert "Arnie" Arnold - Motorola Schaumburg, IL
• Alex Banda - Warner & Swasey, Cleveland
• Jeff Jansen - Delco Air Conditioning, Cleveland
• Larry Sapp - Caterpillar, E. Peoria, IL
• Dennis "Denny" Schraibman - Ranco Controls, Columbus, OH
• Kevin Stranahan - Timken Co., Canton, OH (IMAGE thinks FEs Denny and Kevin should be moved to 2104 sites. Those guys are great on the drums!)
• Patrick "Pat" Shofner - Naval Ordnance, Louisville, KY
• William "Wild Man" Yarnall - John Deere, Dubuque, IA (Phrog: Hats off to Bill for sending the Coed softball team John Deere caps!)

NORTHEAST REGION

• Gerard Guissarri - Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ
• Gerald "Boston" Capps - Raytheon Andover, MA

MID-ATLANTIC REGION

• Robert Bourinski - Raybestos Manhattan, Manheim, PA

INTERNATIONAL

• Dieter Brenn - Germany
• Kevin Kirk - England

THE DPI FE HAS:

• the ability to thrive on the hours of a doctor and the salary of his receptionist.
• the intuitiveness to tell the customer the exact time of repair when you don't know where the trouble is .
• to be equally at ease with the president of a company and the custodian who cleans his office.
• --this series brought to you by John Weber, FEIII, Connecticut

FE Scoreboard

• It's "take me out of the ballgame" season at headquarters. There's been some wild games and some wilder celebrations.
• May 1st will long live in DPI's softball history. On that fateful day, the men's team, the DPI Ducks, took on FE Training Class #53. The game bore a strange resemblance to the Christians being thrown to the lions.
• The Trainees must have known they'd lose and have to buy the beer, so they obviously did their drinking before the game. It's not that the FEs were bad. The Ducks just found their weak spot--anywhere in front of home plate. At the end of extra innings (to give the FEs a chance to catch up), it was Ducks: 25, Field Creatures: 7.
• A rematch was held. The FEs abducted half the men's team, plus Coed's shortstop, Norene Crumb. The outcome, thanks to Norene's snakeball pitch, was a decent Field Creatures: 11, Ducks: 8.