IBM PC original power supply problem (long)

[Michael Holley]

Here is a story about the original IBM PC (5150) power supply. There was a 
defect that showed up a few days before it was to go on sale. The design 
team flew around the country adding fish paper insulation to the 1700 
machines that had shipped to stores.

This is from Blue Magic by James Chposky and Ted Leonsis.(1988) ISBN 
0-8160-13910-8

The book has a few technical errors, they mix-up 8080 and 8086 chips number 
in one chapter. The refer to the modem guy as Dennis Glayes (Hayes). In this 
chapter they refer to a 65 volt power supply (should be watt).  The flow of 
the book tells how the project was kicked off in August 1980 and you could 
buy one in the store in August 1981.

Michael Holley

Chapter 18 - The Emergency Brigade

Initial shipments of the new PC were made to Computerland outlets and Sears 
Business Centers less than a week before the machine was scheduled to be 
unveiled in New York City on Wednesday, August 12, 1981. The shipments were 
delayed till the last possible minute to avoid leaks to the press. 
Preferably, the packing boxes with the PCs inside would not even be opened 
until the afternoon on the day of the official announcement. Then, on August 
10, a potentially devastating discovery threatened to cancel the scheduled 
introduction that so many people had worked so hard and so long to maintain.

At about 2:30 in the afternoon, Joe Sarubbi and his staff were running final 
potentiometer tests to determine if there were any high-voltage leakage on 
some of the new PCs. Time and again, two of the machines tested positive, 
which meant that there was a possible dangerous voltage leak.

The engineers quickly found that the 65-volt power supplies on the two 
machines had too close a tolerance between an electrical raw circuit board 
and the frame of the power supply. This in turn caused too close a spacing 
that could possibly lead to a short-circuit between the electrical current 
and the metal frame. The problem was brought to Wilkie's immediate 
attention. Then a quick call went out to convene the inner circle, along 
with Howie Davidson, the site general manager at Boca Raton.

Sarubbi explained that the power supplies shipped to date had been tested 
and were shown to be safe. But the fan in the power supply could accumulate 
enough dust to create a `bridge' to the metal edge of the machine and cause 
a short-circuit. In addition, a look at worst-case tolerances between the 
printed circuit card and the frame revealed a tolerance that was 
unacceptably close, and a relay out of the circuit board had to be added to 
achieve a permanent fix for the problem. There was only a random chance that 
this could happen again, but that was still more of a chance than Wilkie and 
Sarubbi wanted to take. One power supply failure was one failure too many. 
Meanwhile, more than 1,700 machines-all with short-circuit potentials-were 
sitting innocently in storage at Computerlands and Sears Business Centers 
around the country.

The IBM PC was intended to be the product to put the Sears Business Centers 
on the map. Accordingly, IBM had made elaborate arrangements for a 
full-scale demonstration of the machine to the retailer's senior management 
committee at the Sears Tower in Chicago on the morning of Tuesday, August 
11. Now, here in Boca Raton, less than 18 hours before the big demonstration 
was set to begin 1,500 miles away, there was concern that the machines at 
Sears Tower would not only amaze, but could quite actually shock anyone who 
so much as laid a finger on their casings.

Four pairs of eyes turned on Sarubbi. Estridge was the first to speak. 
"Okay, Joe, what do we do?" Sarubbi said, "We'll have to put a piece of 
insulation in every machine between the printed circuit board and the power 
supply cover. Fish paper, which is a non-conductive cardboard bridge, should 
be sufficient, but this is something we really have to do ourselves."

Dan Wilkie suggested the formation of a quick task force. "We can call them 
'The Power Supply Brigade,' and fly them out to Sears in Chicago and 
elsewhere to put in the insulation. But we have to do it now-today. 
Commercial flights won't get us there in time. We'll have to charter a 
private jet. When they're finished at Sears, they can go back to the Chicago 
airport and fly on to the next destination. Frankly, I don't see any other 
goddam way we can get this done if we still plan to show the machine to 
Sears tomorrow." Estridge winced. He turned back to Sarubbi and said, "Joe, 
the decision to go or not to go is yours." What Estridge really meant was, 
Should we stop the announcement or send out the Brigade?

Sarubbi reasoned that not to send the Brigade would mean the PC announcement 
might be delayed for at least another 30 days. "That would put egg on our 
face in the industry and throughout the company," he later recalled. "But 
there was also no way that we could overlook the safety of the unit."

Never before in his 30-odd years with the company had Joe Sarubbi been so 
overwhelmingly grateful that he worked for IBM with its vast resources and 
capital. He looked back at the frantic, frustrating and yet thoroughly 
exhilarating year gone by and remembered all the times he gazed across the 
ocean and said to himself, "Why in the hell did I ever get into this?" Then 
he pictured the other people on the project and concluded, "They're just 
like me. We're all of a kind. We're wild ducks within IBM and we're doing 
what wild ducks do and that's why I have to stay. "

Then his thoughts returned to the present. "Uh, Joe," Estridge said. And 
Sarubbi instinctively knew what a wild duck would do at a time like this, 
and so he said, "Send the Brigade. And keep the introduction just as it is."

"Well, son-of-a-bitch! All right, let's go!" Wilkie shouted as he turned 
with a big grin and smacked his right fist into his ample left palm. 
Estridge had to shut his eyes for a moment to pretend he hadn't heard 
Wilkie, then came the famous grin. Sydnes and Davidson were also smiling, 
and for that moment, Joe Sarubbi, the old pro, the veteran IBMer, the 
self-professed beach bum-he was the king of the hill, at the top of the 
heap.

-2-
It so happened that Wilkie had a cadre of some 30 devoted admirers on his 
manufacturing staff. They were a gung-ho crowd who liked to hang around with 
Dan because he had a tough side with a tender edge and he was eminently 
fair. And they were loyal to Wilkie, because most of them had never worked 
for anyone else anywhere else at IBM. Infants all, they thought life at IBM 
was just like Project Chess, which, of course, made this a very good company 
to work for. As Wilkie would later reflect, "The team's strength lay in the 
fact that most of them had never really worked under the strictures of 
conventional IBM standards."

Wilkie walked out of the meeting and gathered his staffers. Eagerly, 
expectantly, they circled around their leader as he explained what had 
happened and what had to be done. He said, "I want you guys to go home and 
get your toothbrushes and a change of clothes and then come right back here 
and standby to leave for Chicago tonight. You'll be going by private jet out 
of Boca Raton airport at midnight. We don't know how long you'll be gone, so 
he packed for at least three days." They all but tore the doors off to get 
home, grab their gear and get back to the office to be among the first in 
line to stand by for that emergency flight to Chicago.

As soon as the last car squealed out of the IBM parking lot, Sarubbi's 
office became a war room. From this jerry-built command post, the senior 
staff on the PC group arranged for a private jet to be ready to leave at 
midnight for Chicago.

The plane landed at 3:00 AM on Tuesday in Chicago. Black limousines were 
already waiting to whisk the Brigade through the dark streets and to the 
main entrance of the world's tallest building.

Earlier, back at the war room, Sparky Sparks completed special arrangements 
to admit the Brigade to the Sears Tower at that late hour. The Brigade 
deployed to the demonstration room like commandos. Within three hours, their 
assignment was finished; the fish paper was secured in each PC and the 
machines were tested again for high-voltage leaks. The demonstration for the 
Sears management could go on as planned and no one had to know what happened 
in the Sears Tower the night before.

Back at Boca Raton a phone call came at about 7:00 AM from somewhere in 
Chicago: "Mission accomplished!" the Brigade leader said.
Sarubbi gave Wilkie the thumbs-up sign. Wilkie went back to his own office 
and took his spare shaving kit out of a desk drawer. Still not fully awake, 
he stumbled into the men's room and tried to remember the last time he'd had 
breakfast at home, followed by an uneventful working day.

-3-
During the next day and a half, the Power Supply Brigade, with ample 
supplies of fish paper, flew to Computerland stores in Texas and California. 
Once again, their missions were accomplished before the debut of the PC.

But the power supply episode was still causing upset at Boca Raton. Wilkie 
recalled, "We were really paranoid about what happened. We said, `My God, 
what if the world finds out that we had this quality problem?'

"In time, the world did find out, but the reaction was the exact opposite of 
what we thought it would be. People everywhere were saying, `What a class 
act this company has.' Sears and Computerland told us, `Now we know the kind 
of treatment we can demand from all the other companies we do business 
with.' And so," Wilkie said, "instead of this having a negative impact, it 
became a real plus for the project and an unforgettable experience for those 
men who flew around the country and worked around the clock to guarantee 
that the introduction of the PC would stay on schedule."

-4-
The IBM PC introduced in New York that week had one disk drive, 16 kilobytes 
of random access memory (RAM) and a $1,595 price tag. (Within four years, 
other manufacturers would have a "clone" of the basic PC with two disk 
drives, 256 kilobytes of RAM and it would be available for about $1,000.)

By now, despite the company's security precautions and its refusal to give 
any details of the "new product introduction," enough information had leaked 
out of IBM to make the purpose of the August 12 announcement well known 
throughout the industry and on Wall Street. These reports were especially 
significant to Martin A. Alpert in Cleveland, Ohio. Alpert, a doctor and 
engineer, was president of a small company called Tecmar, a sort of anagram 
for "Marty's technology.

Tecmar got its start with a computer-based machine used to diagnose lung 
problems. But the company had the technology in place to build add-on 
products for the basic IBM PC. Predicting that there would be an enormous 
market for such add-ons, Alpert put his staff to work designing products for 
a machine they had never seen. Then he made careful plans to buy an IBM PC 
when it became available. As it turned out, Tecmar bought the first IBM PC 
to be sold anywhere.