UNIXPC owners! Check your keyboard datecode!

[Todd Day]

Take a look at the rear of your keyboard, right next to where
the curly cable snaps in.  If you have a date code between 8524 and
8538, then...

I may have worked on it!  Yes, that's right!  Before my junior
year in college, I got a temporary job making and testing keyboards
for Convergent Technologies.  The pay was great, especially since
we had to work a lot of overtime.  A real nice summer job.

The actual keyboard without the case would come in from an overseas
vendor.  What we would do is put the keyboards in the plastic case,
check to make sure all the keycaps looked okay, and then use the
diagnostic diskette routine to check to make sure that all the
keys actually worked.  We'd then stamp the date code on the left and
a QC stamp on the right.  Some of the keyboards would be checked
by a second QC person.  In that case, you'll have two QC stamps.

In another building, there were people from AT&T checking out entire
systems.  If they found a keyboard that went through both QC people
and was still bad, we'd have to open up all the rest of the systems
in that area and check all of those keyboards again.  What a pain!
This actually happened quite a bit because of cracked keyboards.
Evidently, the freon we were using to clean the keyboard was making
it brittle.  We eventually went to another cleaner.

The last half of the summer, I went over to work on the 510 line.
I got to put the 'jelly bags' on top of the touch screen.  I had
to check them to make sure they didn't have any air bubbles or
thickness anomolies in them.  One time, we got a massive shipment
of overly thick bags from Dow Chemical.  The problem was so bad
that a couple managers and I flew back to the middle of Michigan
(Dow World HQ) to discuss the problem.

Those sure were cute machines.  Too bad I couldn't have gotten
a hold of one.  Sure would have been a lot nicer than using
the Phone Mangager!

-- 
Todd Day |   todd at ivucsb.sba.ca.us   |  ucsbcsl!ivucsb!todd
	"I believed what I was told, I thought it was a good
	 life, I thought I was happy.  Then I found something
	 that changed it all..."	   --- Anonymous, 2112