As an Application Engineer I get to visit multi-national corporations down to backyard-shed operations. Several years ago I visited a local signage company to install a floating license and version upgrade for their 3D CAD software, and was directed to their 'backup server' located in a dingy office in a shed at the rear of the property. The 'backup server' was a retired 386 PC running Windows 95 and with a grimy Colorado tape drive installed, and was connected via a half-duplex 10Mbit link using a protocol I had never even heard of. I did the best I could with what was there, and left at the end of the day without being able to do a full test due to the main office being closed. I flew to the USA the following day for a week's Beta testing in Huntsville, then called the company when I returned to ensure that everything was OK.

I have never been subjected to so many expletives in the first minute of a 'phone conversation! Apparently the network link failed after my visit, the daily backup failed (and wasn't checked for almost a week), several job files and a week's accounts had been lost and the business was facing bankruptcy because of my interference ... etc. etc.

The following day it transpired that by coincidence, the adjacent factory had been carrying a large steel beam under their overhead crane on the afternoon of my visit, and it had swung out of control and punched through the common wall - severing the solitary network cable strung on the other side, which nobody had noticed!

I never did get an apology.

Rick Mason
Director,
MASCO Design Services Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia

I was only 15 at the time (1997) and the place i was working at was a local supermaket store which was a job then back when i was in school. i was heavily into computers and just learning c+ and other ms linux opps, the store check out system was a clear hit before any coles or Woolworth stores had ever imagined but.. the story goes on.. the operating system was the dinosaur at the time running a dos 3.30 with a interface that was ahead of time then but as the server, that was a mistake!!! the check out systems used to run 386 2mb ram and a 20mb hard drive (wha!?!?!?!) it was reliable but the software running was overwhelmed on overload, with a barcode system running over a 1400bps .014kb of a twisted wire which ran up in the celing to the back office. the boss got to know me as a teck guy and know all... so he asked me to figure why at the end of a day or when purchasing an item the computers were slowing down and freezing the checkout systems (mind you he would do the purchasing when it was peak time in the afternoon) i did not know at yet of the system until he asked me... so i went to investigate... mind you i was a kinda nerd then and the girls were a total distraction :D but i found out that the network was based on a 1983 modem switch network and three check out systems were using the single .014kb system. when the staff were serving customers with scanning the items the data was being sent to the back office every hit, the boss the other hand was doing purchases via a dail up modem (the ones where you place a speaker (sender) to the reciever and a mic (reciever) and that was chugging on the same network but a little faster (1.2kb) i told him to wait either before or afterday so it would not collide with overloading the system. it worked the next day... the next thing was even funnier but that might be another storey..... :) thanks for reading!!!!@@@@