Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 20:08:38 +0800 From: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au> To: John Birrell <jb@cimlogic.com.au> Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard), jbarbee@singular.com, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: future of slpha port Message-ID: <199806031208.UAA19305@spinner.netplex.com.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 03 Jun 1998 10:40:25 %2B1000." <199806030040.KAA22063@cimlogic.com.au>
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John Birrell wrote: > Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > The 4 Alphas which Digital loaned to us many months ago now are a > > different story, and of those we basically now have 3 on indefinite > > loan status from DEC. The 4th, a multiprocessor ALPHAserver, never > > made it through the Australian customs barrier to its intended > > recipient and was eventually simply returned to Digital. That will be > > the first and last time I attempt to have any significant piece of > > hardware sent into that country. :-( > > Argh, don't say that! It should have been possible to get it in on > demo status. There is probably a special form to fill out. Unfortunately, there were other problems too. One of the three items got "lost", the three packages got sent to the wrong place, got shipped via three different carriers, none of the shippers were going to do anything until insurance claims were done - but they didn't know what was missing as there were problems with the shipping documentation, plus there was a hefty bond that they wanted somebody to pay (to the tune of about AU$20K) and so on. The DEC folks in the UK were under the impression that the the bond had been paid, but the folks here knew nothing about it. :-( The people here were not going to let anybody near it until the bond was paid, but the DEC folks were under the impression it already had. And so, nobody was able to check to see if there was a shipping documentation error (ie: whether it was packed differently to the documentation and there ended up being only one package in addition to the 135kg pallette, so there was no chance of an insurance claim getting started, and so on. It was doomed right from the start, there were way too many people involved who didn't know what was going on.. It was a damn shame. Cheers, -Peter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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