Final VMS Lessons

 

My college was always getting used computing equipment donations.  Our biggest donor was Hershey Foods.  In 1995 their H.B. Reese subsidiary (they make the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups) replaced every VT100 terminal with brand new VT510's.  Of course, at the time, the 510, which was a disk-less terminal, was actually more expensive then even an outdated IBM PS/2.  Reese made us a simple deal...these terminals were already about 15 years old...we would drive up, test each terminal and load up those that we wanted on a UHaul and help them toss the ones we didn't want into a dumpster.  

 

I pleaded with the VP of Computing to walk away from this deal.  By the time we drove there, fired up each terminal, tested it, loaded up the good ones, drive them back in a UHaul with a rigid suspension...we'd be lucky to have one or two working terminals.  Furthermore, these were antiquated technology.  But the VP thought that a few spare VT's in each dormitory would be good for students to check email.  

 

 

I drove the 15 minutes to Reese in the UHaul and was presented with a palate of VT100's.  I counted 220.  Just kinda thrown on a pile.  I spent the remainder of the day, and the following day, testing each terminal.  There were 25 working terminals.  So Reese got some free labor because I now had to toss the dead terminals into the dumpster.  Each VT100 weighs about, I'd say, 65 pounds.  And they are big and bulky.  

 

So now I had to carefully load 25 VT100's into a UHaul and hope they would still work after making the trip back to school.  They were terribly dusty and I couldn't stop sneezing.  One of their techs suggested we carefully pack them on the palate, wrap them in bubble wrap and shrink wrap and then carefully place them in the UHaul with a forklift.  I watched as they handled this for me...the least they could do since I carried the other 90% of the terminals to the dumpster already.  Once loaded I carefully drove the UHaul back to school, avoiding as many central PA potholes as possible.  

 

Now I had to unload them.  The back of a UHaul in August is HOT.  So I found a forklift at school and decided that I could probably figure out how to unload the pallet all by myself.  

 

Bad idea.  

 

As you can imagine the net result was a pallet of old computing dinosaurs turned upside down on a loading dock.  It was an accident (or VAXident) but I again had an unhappy VP.  We managed to salvage 4 working VT100's.  The remainder went in a dumpster.  

 

That I loaded.