John;

You hit the nail on the head. In December 1981 our IT Department came to my department and did a survey of our Main Frame requirements. I had just been promoted from engineer to technical supervisor/engineer, and had inherited a manual system of some 30,000 6”x9” index cards for electronic and mechanical test and measurement equipment. One card for each piece of equipment and it had to meat DOD requirements (MIL STD 45662A), with the complete history of that piece of test and measurement equipment.

I had a S-100 Computer and got a copy of dBaseII. Within six months of my “free” time I had created a computer program to maintain all the equipment for our corporation. It worked great and I could do forecasting. What a tool! No more “gut feeling” about the business. Four and a half years later the IT department came to me and said they had time to begin my departments program. I told them I did not want or require their services. That caused a BIG stink – but I won. By then we were using PC’s and dBase III/Fox, and networked to each technican. We went to Fox – we liked the speed.

A joke I told at our user group some time ago: IBM purchased all PC manufactures and announced no more PC’s will be built. IBM Marketing has announced a new campaign: “Main Frames for the Home”. There are still some who think only “Big Blue Iron” can do the job.

Tom