Materiel and graft 4402

re:

After success of 360, the technical gurus were really riding high, and they were given some labreastude for FS

(which i somewhat characterized as the inmates being in charge of the insbreastution). when FS failed ... the pendulum somewhat started to swing in the other direction (non-technical, business types taking over more control of the company). a recent post mentioning FS

for whatever reason, the disk division got a new non-engineer, non-technical president in the late 70s.

The los gatos lab (bldg. 29) had been built in the 60s on 200 acres of undeveloped land and was a award winning showcase location. They later had problems because some amount of the construction was custom ... like custom sized redwood plywood (instead of standard 4x8) ... and it was effectively impossible to get any new replacement.

the new president had a House Pictures over near the los gatos lab and decided that his office should be near his house ... rather than over in the hdqtrs building on the san jose plant site. he had the back part of the los gato lab redone for him and small set of his executive staff; executive area got carpeted floors, the exterior walls and windows were redone with countermeasures for various kinds of evesdropping and snooping, and the corridor that executives might take from their area to the lab lunch room also got carpeting (the lab somewhat taking on dual personality, the engineer and hardware areas retained their tile floors while the executive areas were all differentiated by their carpeted floors). there was also going to be a special executive drive-way, small executive parking area, and special executive entrance (for the executive area).

before the drive-way, parking area, and private executive entrance was constructed (but after the interior changes had been made), the disk division got a new president with hardware background ... who wanted his office to be on the main plant site, in the middle of the business.

This happened about the time I was getting HSDT project going

and I was able to somewhat take advantage of the situation to acquire much of the vacant "executive" office space in los gatos lab (that never even saw any of its new occupants).

so, how does this all tie-in with the referenced post (mentioning sherpa, apa6670)?

I had first met Pete Sih in the early 70s as part of the cp67 "h" and "i" effort (develop support for 370 virtual memory on cp67 360-67 infrastructure). The cp67i system was designed to run on real 370s (but original run in 370 virtual machine under cp67h running on real 360-67 for the first year of its existance). Pete was one of three people that came out from the san jose disk division ... to add block-mux channel along with 3330 and 2305 device support to the "cp67i" system ... later sometimes referred to as the "cp67sj" system (enabling cp67sj system to run on real 370-145s supporting real 3330 and real 2305 devices).

Later, Pete was (still) living not to far from the los gatos lab ... but having to commute up to the palo alto science center. So a deal was cut for Pete to have one of the vacant "executive" offices (in the back of the los gatos lab) and minimize his having to commute to the palo alto science center.

Even later, Pete, my wife, and I departed the company on the same day. Bldg. 29 was eventually demolished and the 200 acres sold off for housing development.

a few recent posts mentioning cp67h and cp67i systems