belvaz
Interesting to see this ole time goodie company coming out the vaults. I used to be The Technical Support / Systems programmer at Systime Bristol & I do remember going to Leeds & seeing a scruffy individual fiddling around on a Transam. That individual thurned out to be John Gow himself.in 1983 Systime UK came up with a working Mini / PC system which was unfortunately based on Dec's Basic + RSTS/E operating system. This at a time when they had the majority of UK VAX systems installed. It was this introduction that really got Systime in trouble for whereas they could clone hardware & other things to their heart's content, RSTS/E was a proprietary operating system far ahead of the crap from rivals like IBM, Data General & HP & copying it so shamelessly was a no-no (at that time I could have walked in & out of any bank's systems in the UK & they would not have seen me coming r going).I used to work in this wonderful system & back then (1981-1983) they had wonderful things called Message Receivers & you could use these to create dynamic objects that loitered in the background & did do amazing things including a real time system I created for the Wolverhampton & Dudley Brewery to copy all sales orders to a remote location for security purposes. It was also used by yours truly to spy on people or to wind up someone's goat by doing the famous Computer version of Chinese torture called a DING. This meant that at random times in completely strange moments the poor victim (mine was a nose picking idjit who brought in smelly boiled eggs every bleeding day) would hear a mysterious bell on his computer or see a fake logon screen in addition to other peculiar things that only happened to him.He went bananas one lunch time when I was away & somehow got a System Administrator's password & killed off Job 0 (yes we had those back then) which was the operating system back then as he could see 2 identical tasks one of course being my nice & naughty thingie. An uproar followed when the whole computer system collapsed & poor Phillip C was left a withering wreck after the descent of every living being in the office who had been working at things other than picking their noses.Systime Bristol was famous then for the 3 Debbies. Debbie Sanderson (software support), Debbie Anderson (Management support) & yet another Debbie Anderson down at Andrewartha Windows in Plymouth. I have not forgotten any of you 3.Then there was Colin our engineering manager, his secretary Gill, the late Eddie Egan (System Analyst) who had been in computers from the mid-1950s, Dave Burgess our esteemed manager & little old me who used to masquerade as Godfrey Henry Bel, so that people could called me God which was indeed my function at the techie desk who did not use the word impossible ever. And there was Sarah who used to nick my sandwiches & a short sales manager (Bellusconi size) who claimed to be the pop singer Chris Rainbow who'd had some small electronic pop hits. And there was a sales man called Dave who had a girlfriend called Charlie (true honestly) who won a Rolls (could have been a Bentley) for a week in a sales promotion & then took himself & Charlie to a safari park one weekend with the roof open whilst munching inside the car. Yes an elephant actually decided to have a bunny & stuck his trunk inside, Dave panicked & tried to close the sun roof with the elephant's bun clutching trunk still in the car. Result one seriously bashed in car courtesy of the enraged pachyderm's legs. This was the story he told us at the time. Only he & Charlie know the truth.Ah wonderful times & memories & I still remember & miss you all.The company in Chesterfield was one I did some consultancy work in about 1987 on a software project to convert an American Sales Ledger to an acceptable UK version after they had hunted me down & was run by employees who used to work at one time for Mill's Associates out of Monmouth. I had the pleasure to work there under Geoff Toogood who really did shape my computer work ethics for the rest of time. What a hard task master he was. Chesterfield then had a famous MP who was none other than Edwina Currie & every time you went into a restaurant or takeaway you had an egg loitering in it for no reason & on my first visit there the taxi driver said 'Where r u going my luv?' You can guess how confused & awkward I felt (nothing to do with gays) as I asked 'Who r u talking to?'Ooh yar the good old days when the Earth had yet to cool down & the moon still controlled our sex drives & our brains hung around behind.
Mr.chemist
I had a share in the fun and games at Systime, from 1981 to 1985, working as a field engineer, then, after an ill-timed and badly-judged remark, in the less-well-paid role of "depot repair"The contract with BL ensured that my first ever brand new car was a Morris Ital, the facelifted Marina. This was a pleasant car to drive, reliable and comfortable, never let me down or used oil. This was a remarkably better experience than almost everyone else enjoyed, since they were mostly lemons of the first order. My second company car was the generally unreliable Ambassador, the facelift of the Princess (the "Terry and June" car), though I had a good one, it never let me down and was roomy and comfortable and converted me to liking FWD cars.People I remember: I worked first in the old mill on Dewsbury Road, I was appointed by the Leeds service manager, Jim Dumbell ("Dim Jumble"), who was succeeded by Gerard Boitelle, who I never really liked, understandable as he was very busy and I only saw him when I was in trouble. My supervisor was Jim Gibbs, a great guy. Jim Gee was service manager, if I remember correctly. Charlie Feather was head of Technical Support.The Glass Palace was reportedly designed on a napkin in a restaurant. John Gow drew it, saying "that's what I want." If there were extravagant parties, they weren't where I was, though the Christmas dinner was always pretty decent and the company would sort out a hotel room at a reduced price, so you didn't drive home drunk and bend their car.After CDC took over, DEC increasingly attempted to woo our service customers and after a short time, it became obvious that Systime had copied the interface boards almost entirely, only changing the position of the connector. This was copyright infringement and was something that one could be prosecuted for, regardless of the "exporting to Russia" business. As regards that, I remember it being that we had sold DEC equipment to some Swiss people, who had sold it to some Bulgarians, and it had therefore crossed the Iron Curtain and we were in trouble.Trouble also came every month, the horrors of cash flow reared up and bit us every time, as with increasing trade month-on-month and 90-day payment terms, the money from one month wasn't enough to pay wages and buy new kit to sell next month. As a result, engineers were often sent out "installing" half-built systems with no panels on and/or almost empty cabinets. Anything to get a signature, so it could be billed this month and therefore count as assets.In some ways the loss of Systime was a great technical loss, for example, DEC computers had loads of switches on the front panel to get them started (booting), which was seldom a problem in their original homes in university laboratories, but Systime's computers had one ROM on a circuit board to do the same thing. This was innovative, since it meant that the computers were literally "turnkey" which was novel at that time. So many other memories, 5MHz processors, removable hard disks, usually CDC SMD 64Mb disks, Digidata tape backup drives the first laser printers, £150,000 as I recall, at E J Arnold, the educational supplier. Band impact printers for invoices and such, 600 lines per minute and temporary deafness for unprepared engineers who stood next to them.I moved on, to a Systime customer, Technology for Business, who had terribly inconvenient offices on Woodhouse Lane, with restricted parking and super-diligent traffic wardens. Then I did a PGCE and I have been a science teacher for nearly two decades. Funnily enough, staff changes meant that I was called-upon to teach Computing this year and all my experience and knowledge of things like binary arithmetic, computer architecture and operating systems has has to be dragged back into current memory!
