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hirezIn the eighties, I used to perform in the field circus.
My actual title mutated from 'bench technician' when I was the junior oik in charge of aligning floppy drives with 'scope, test disk[1] and drive-exerciser box[2], fixing fried dot-matrix printers and otherwise waving a soldering iron at broken pre-PC computers, to 'field engineer' when I was allowed a company car, my own screwdrivers and a borrowed Interfaker[3] and sent off to be groused at by the nice customers. I don't use the term 'engineer' since being mithered at for quite some time. Not chartered == not engineer. Seems fair enough in retrospect.
Our area was The South West, which meant Swindon in one direction, the Police in Carmarthen the other way, English China Clay in Cornwall and some site in Leamington to t'north. Sod's law determined that many of the sites with a four-hour response contract (ECC and the polis, f'rinstance) were the furthest away. Bear in mind that 'four hour response' meant 'Someone on site and fixing the kit in four hours' not 'Some oik in a call centre far away will have asked you to turn it off and turn it on again four hours after you have placed a service call'.
This was before good cars (The Sierra was a revelation in comfort and speed) and useful roads (The run to Appledore Shipbuilders, who were/are(?) just down the coast from Barnstaple usually involved a 5AM start from Cheltenham in order to hit the Tiverton junction of the M5 for seven so that you'd not get caught up in the nose-to-tail caravan traffic on the A361).
It was also before the mass availability of mobile phones. When the office moved down to a trading estate in Eastville, the AA opened a car-phone fitting place opposite. One used to see a parade of expensive kit (Jag XJSes, Mercs, Granadas) being pulled to bits so someone could fit a Motorola (probably. Perhaps those came later?) and drill a hole in the roof for the aerial. We'd got BT phonecards which were so tiresomely complicated that they only ended up being used in extremis. Most people weren't bothered when you asked if you could call the office to let them know what was going on (Or to call the tech support blokes in Derby if you hit a nasty problem, usually DEC LSI or Newbury Data related), but once in a while you'd run into some office manager who really had a hate on and get told to piss off.
We all had scruffy A-Z books. Bristol, Bath and Cardiff was the one that got the most use. I don't recall if I ever found one for Swansea. I do recall having a minor meltdown in the middle of a queue of traffic because I had no bloody idea where the AA Insurance shop was and no useful way of finding out or ringing someone else to find out. (It turned out to be in some pedestrianised bit over a Spud-u-like. The pong of those places still gives me the minor horrors since I ended up being stuck there for most of a day and my clothes stank of spud-baking.
Since there was no GPS, I got quite good at just going somewhere and finding the sites by guesswork and divination. It was shit and I hated it to begin with, but after a while I started to get quite good at it. I daresay I could navigate to what used to be the Serviscope offices in Cambourne or Swansea without thinking about it too hard, even now.
Actually, it happens a lot. I have driven to places that I don't remember visiting before when a set of roads will open out into something terribly familiar and I'll be right back in time where I am nineteen or twenty and scrabbling in the footwell of a Pug 305 estate for a C90 with Big Black or New Order on it.
Some of the bits I miss - there was the one time I was soldering up a Superbrain motherboard (a bit of a departure. Usually one would haul the thing out wholesale and swap it, but I think this one had an obvious mechanical fault) in the old control tower at Rolls-Royce in Filton (that old factory has been flattened. It was a bit of a shock[4].) when a(n) F-111 took off and passed me at eye level. Those things were loud. Other bits I don't - most of the people who worked in travel agents were horrible bastards, and for some reason those in Thomas Cook shops were thick and horrible, so the jobs that called for swapping out Sony (nice kit) or Philips (dreadful rubbish) viewdata terminals were usually grim experiences.
(I think I recall what sparked all this off - my subconscious has been busily making me remember events from the distant past where I was a bit crap and therefore embarrassed. Why it thinks this is a good idea is somewhat beyond me. Perhaps it just thinks I should be having a shit time cringing at old memories instead of concentrating on useful things like remembering to change gear and avoid speeding buses? Who can say. Anyway. I was forced to recall a minor argument with the manager of the Visionhire shop in Newton Abbott, which, what?
[1] An special 5.25 floppy with a set of analogue signals recorded on or around track 20. You'd step the drive out to that track and hold it there while adjusting the heads yea and fro for maximal signal quality. The boss was less than pleased when a very buggered drive scribbled crap on the disk. Those things were expensive.
[2] A box of 7400 that could step floppy drives to given tracks. Pretty much the first program I wrote in Zorland/tech C was an emulation of that for the PC because the sods I was working for at that point didn't see why they should spring for expensive test gear. It was all BIOS calls cribbed from the first and best Norton book, which was stolen by a fizz-haired bollix from Portsmouth.
[3] The only serial break-out boxes worth having.
[4] I get the distinct impression that part of the universe is dedicated to erasing my past. It goes beyond basic entropy and wanders off into malicious destruction of buildings and the wholesale disappearance of people I rather liked. It's a bit bloody previous, frankly.
My actual title mutated from 'bench technician' when I was the junior oik in charge of aligning floppy drives with 'scope, test disk[1] and drive-exerciser box[2], fixing fried dot-matrix printers and otherwise waving a soldering iron at broken pre-PC computers, to 'field engineer' when I was allowed a company car, my own screwdrivers and a borrowed Interfaker[3] and sent off to be groused at by the nice customers. I don't use the term 'engineer' since being mithered at for quite some time. Not chartered == not engineer. Seems fair enough in retrospect.
Our area was The South West, which meant Swindon in one direction, the Police in Carmarthen the other way, English China Clay in Cornwall and some site in Leamington to t'north. Sod's law determined that many of the sites with a four-hour response contract (ECC and the polis, f'rinstance) were the furthest away. Bear in mind that 'four hour response' meant 'Someone on site and fixing the kit in four hours' not 'Some oik in a call centre far away will have asked you to turn it off and turn it on again four hours after you have placed a service call'.
This was before good cars (The Sierra was a revelation in comfort and speed) and useful roads (The run to Appledore Shipbuilders, who were/are(?) just down the coast from Barnstaple usually involved a 5AM start from Cheltenham in order to hit the Tiverton junction of the M5 for seven so that you'd not get caught up in the nose-to-tail caravan traffic on the A361).
It was also before the mass availability of mobile phones. When the office moved down to a trading estate in Eastville, the AA opened a car-phone fitting place opposite. One used to see a parade of expensive kit (Jag XJSes, Mercs, Granadas) being pulled to bits so someone could fit a Motorola (probably. Perhaps those came later?) and drill a hole in the roof for the aerial. We'd got BT phonecards which were so tiresomely complicated that they only ended up being used in extremis. Most people weren't bothered when you asked if you could call the office to let them know what was going on (Or to call the tech support blokes in Derby if you hit a nasty problem, usually DEC LSI or Newbury Data related), but once in a while you'd run into some office manager who really had a hate on and get told to piss off.
We all had scruffy A-Z books. Bristol, Bath and Cardiff was the one that got the most use. I don't recall if I ever found one for Swansea. I do recall having a minor meltdown in the middle of a queue of traffic because I had no bloody idea where the AA Insurance shop was and no useful way of finding out or ringing someone else to find out. (It turned out to be in some pedestrianised bit over a Spud-u-like. The pong of those places still gives me the minor horrors since I ended up being stuck there for most of a day and my clothes stank of spud-baking.
Since there was no GPS, I got quite good at just going somewhere and finding the sites by guesswork and divination. It was shit and I hated it to begin with, but after a while I started to get quite good at it. I daresay I could navigate to what used to be the Serviscope offices in Cambourne or Swansea without thinking about it too hard, even now.
Actually, it happens a lot. I have driven to places that I don't remember visiting before when a set of roads will open out into something terribly familiar and I'll be right back in time where I am nineteen or twenty and scrabbling in the footwell of a Pug 305 estate for a C90 with Big Black or New Order on it.
Some of the bits I miss - there was the one time I was soldering up a Superbrain motherboard (a bit of a departure. Usually one would haul the thing out wholesale and swap it, but I think this one had an obvious mechanical fault) in the old control tower at Rolls-Royce in Filton (that old factory has been flattened. It was a bit of a shock[4].) when a(n) F-111 took off and passed me at eye level. Those things were loud. Other bits I don't - most of the people who worked in travel agents were horrible bastards, and for some reason those in Thomas Cook shops were thick and horrible, so the jobs that called for swapping out Sony (nice kit) or Philips (dreadful rubbish) viewdata terminals were usually grim experiences.
(I think I recall what sparked all this off - my subconscious has been busily making me remember events from the distant past where I was a bit crap and therefore embarrassed. Why it thinks this is a good idea is somewhat beyond me. Perhaps it just thinks I should be having a shit time cringing at old memories instead of concentrating on useful things like remembering to change gear and avoid speeding buses? Who can say. Anyway. I was forced to recall a minor argument with the manager of the Visionhire shop in Newton Abbott, which, what?
[1] An special 5.25 floppy with a set of analogue signals recorded on or around track 20. You'd step the drive out to that track and hold it there while adjusting the heads yea and fro for maximal signal quality. The boss was less than pleased when a very buggered drive scribbled crap on the disk. Those things were expensive.
[2] A box of 7400 that could step floppy drives to given tracks. Pretty much the first program I wrote in Zorland/tech C was an emulation of that for the PC because the sods I was working for at that point didn't see why they should spring for expensive test gear. It was all BIOS calls cribbed from the first and best Norton book, which was stolen by a fizz-haired bollix from Portsmouth.
[3] The only serial break-out boxes worth having.
[4] I get the distinct impression that part of the universe is dedicated to erasing my past. It goes beyond basic entropy and wanders off into malicious destruction of buildings and the wholesale disappearance of people I rather liked. It's a bit bloody previous, frankly.
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 09:44 pm (UTC)Interfakers in that flashy plastic box with the flipover lid...
Fizz-haired bollixes from Portsmouth....
...Ah, fecking miserable days.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 09:47 pm (UTC)Appledore Shipbuilders, starting from Cheltenham?
I had AMP connectors in downtown Bideford. Same caravans, but I had to do it from farthest Geordieland and still get there by yesterday.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 09:50 pm (UTC)No fuckwit in carpet slippers this time round (although he seemed to approve of you).
no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 10:22 pm (UTC)I do tend to appeal to the wrong people.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 10:19 pm (UTC)When working for Fucking Michael I was handed a doomed project that involved bits of NHS in Stockton-on-Tees.
I mostly remember starting to fall asleep while pelting up the M1 somewhere around Derby and thinking it would be a really good idea to rest both eyes for a while. Good sense mostly prevailed and I stopped for a lard-special from a Little Chef.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 10:37 pm (UTC)Closest I came was having one sail over the bonnet and hit the windscreen.
That was some press shop down in Kent?/Essex? I'd made it about as far back as Stockton.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-06 08:25 am (UTC)... finding that ICI were still using our Commodore PETs with IEEE488 on one of their state-of-the-art production lines, and having to fix them.
...attempting to write code for reliable communications via 8250 UARTS.
...designing an ArcNET over RS485 system... and bugger me the damn thing actually worked (and then the company went into receivership so it never went into production).
I still have a large collection of A-Z. I miss those.