Elephant Memory Systems tribute page

[Billy Pettit]

John C. Ellingboe wrote:

I never had a problem with all the elephant disk that I used
back then but the absolute worst that I ever saw was a batch of
CDC 5.25" disk that maybe half of them were really useable.  I
would take anyones noname disks over them any day.

This brings back memories...  I worked at CDC (OK City) when they were
making floppies.  The head of the division was Thomas Kamp, one of the
founders of CDC.  He had a CDC field engineer come out and install a couple
of CDC drives in his system.  This poor kid didn't know who his customer was
and just acted normal.  When it came time to run a diagnostic, the kid
removed the CDC diskettes and used a Verbatim.  Kamp asked him why, and he
answered (honestly) that the CDC media didn't work on CDC drives.  In fact,
he said, nobody can read CDC media.

A few days later, we had guests from Headquarters who went over the story in
great detail.  They verifed that CDC drives really couldn't read CDC media.
And proceeded to give one of the nastiest public ass chewings I've everbeen
witness to.  Not long after that, CDC media was made by 3M and branded.

Billy