Rack Mount Servers

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, at 11:57am, Derek D. Martin wrote:
> Good point.  What's with Torx anyway?

  When Compaq started using Torx (back in the 1980s), *nobody* had seen Torx
before.  It was almost like putting a lock on the case.  Unless you had a
Special Compaq Screwdriver, you could not service the machine.

  They have actually *improved* quite a bit.  They used to do things like
use non-standard memory modules and non-standard connectors for everything
they could.  "Oh, it isn't a *Compaq* floppy disk drive?  Then it won't
fit."

  Same with software.  Back in the days when MS-DOS 3.3 was hot stuff, it
was almost routine to find software that worked everywhere else did not work
on a Compaq.

  They also love incredibly complicated designs, when something much simpler
(and therefore cheaper) would have done just as well.  My favorite was a
Compaq computer, in what *appeared to be* a standard tower configuration.  
But if you opened it up, you found the motherboard/backplane was split into
*three* pieces, at 90-degree angles.  There was absolutely no reason to not
just use a single PCB and put everything on one side.

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-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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