Germanium transistors: logic circuits in the IBM 1401 computer

Re:Germanium transistors: logic circuits in the IBM 1401 com... by bogomipz on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:28PM (#26338270)

Wow this link is fascinating! How fun that you got to be a part of that. I'm trying to imagine an IBM field tech back in the day being called to a customer site and having to go through similar with a customer who was renting one of these for exorbitant sums. It must have been stressful. I'm sure there was some sort of SLA.

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Re:Germanium transistors: logic circuits in the IBM 1401 com... by kens on Thursday March 04, 2021 @12:54AM (#26339129)

I've talked to old-time IBM service engineers and IBM would do just about anything to keep a customer's computer running. An engineer could call his boss and say that a customer needed a very expensive replacement core memory, and IBM would send someone on the next flight to deliver it. If the customer was in the middle of nowhere, someone would drive out with a part and the engineer would drive to meet them halfway. There's a reason people say that nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

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Re:Germanium transistors: logic circuits in the IBM 1401 com... by protomyth on Thursday March 04, 2021 @07:21AM (#26341439)

IBM is the only company that will do a proper service contract with folks in rural areas. Heck, the IBM service tech arrived at our door with a new RAID card for our machine running IBM i before I knew there was a problem.

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