Elephant Memory Systems tribute page

[John C. Ellingboe]

Billy Pettit wrote:
> 
> 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

The Huntsville Computer Club must have gotten them before 3M
started to make them them.  A couple of the members didn't want
to take a chance on any off brand disk so that is what we ended
up with as a major brand.