229 S. Madison, Loveland, CO 80537 Tel: 800-829-9101 Fax: (970) 669-5656 epaul@qualitytest.com

Everyone knows about oxymorons and clichés like "jumbo shrimp" and "war is hell" but what should we call the empty slogans of politicians, personnel managers and sports announcers? You know the situation. They have to say something intelligent-sounding but inoffensive. For example, a teacher says to a parent group: "We mustn’t push the students too hard". Who could possibly disagree? But exactly how hard is "too hard"? This is a "one-size-fits-all" platitude that means whatever you want it to mean. Here’s another example: A sportscaster says: "Good pitching always beats good hitting". Again, by definition, if the batters are getting on base, it’s not good pitching! It sounds like a brilliant observation but it’s actually meaningless.

I think we should call this type of platitude a "vacuphone". A vacuphone is an empty slogan through which the speaker is attempting to convey profound wisdom or sincerity. For example, the school board candidate will say: "I only want what’s best for the kids!" (Who would say otherwise?) This is political trickery at its finest. The voters may forget that what the candidate thinks is best for the kids may not be the same as what they think is best. A vacuphone is not really a lie but it often encourages self-deception. That’s the beauty of vacuphones.

Let me apologize for the name vacuphone. It’s not a very good name. The best names are already taken. Consider the art form commonly called "lying". There are many degrees if lying, each with its own name: the mild mannered "euphemism" or the more serious "bullshit", followed by it’s big brother "complete bullshit" and, of course, "damn lie" on the extreme far end of the spectrum. We know of a big company that told its laid-off employees that they had been "selected to participate" in the staff reduction program. How would you classify a statement like this? Is it a harmless euphemism or complete bullshit?

As we understand it, Craig Roberts started the business in his garage with only one customer and no experience in the ICT business. As one of his earliest customers put it: "Craig is quite a character. He started that business, knowing nothing about the business." The story goes that someone working for Rockwell asked him to drill some holes on phenolic plates so they could build a fixture and after that, he was hooked. Good luck, Craig!

QTS is buying "previously owned" 3070’s to support our parts and service business. Contact QTS if you are interested in buying or selling a 3070. QTS also stocks replacement parts including pin cards, ASRU, control cards and module power supplies. If you need assistance troubleshooting a problem, give us a call. We give free technical support to our spare parts and tests development customers.

QTS announces a new 2-day seminar on 3070 maintenance. The seminar provides training for customers that wish to perform 3070 maintenance at the board-swap level. The class features six hands-on labs in which the students learn to fix real problems following a simple troubleshooting procedure. Contact QTS for more information about the schedule and cost of these classes. On-site training is also available.

Many 3070 users have elected self-maintenance rather than buy service contracts for the 3070. There are at least four reasons that this makes sense: 1) the 3070 system is very reliable, 2) the 3070 is very well documented for self-maintenance purposes, 3) used replacement parts are available from QTS at attractive prices and 4) expensive or unnecessary system upgrades may be avoided. We provide free tech support to self-maintenance customers who purchase their replacement parts from QTS.

QTS offers hardware and technical support for the older 3070 machines including many of the components that are approaching Agilent’s "end of support". We have the following items immediately available:

Control XT (E4000-66512), Control Plus Card – 03066-66511, also the original Control Card – 03066-66510

ASRU "C" – 03066-66532, ASRU "B" – 03066-66531, and ASRU – 03066-66530

Hybrid Plus SD6 E1046-66522, Hybrid Plus SD12 03066-66520, Hybrid Plus SD12 03066-66521

Hybrid Double density Pay-Per-Use E4000-66546 and Hybrid PPU, Single density E4045-66526,

Hybrid Double Density 6 Megapattern E4000-66540

Channel cards and Access plus cards are also available

Controller 725 and C110 – motherboards, keyboards, power supplies, RAM and Disc

Controller B180L and C240 - motherboards, keyboards, power supplies, RAM and Disc

Controller Upgrades to B180L or C240

DDS1, DDS2 and DDS3 Dat tape drives, Expansion Hard drives, Ticket printers

Yeah, they’re old but they still work! Calibration includes routine maintenance such as replacing worn-out fans or dried-up electrolytic capacitors. A calibration certificate that shows NIST trace numbers is included. Our ASRU calibration service includes "before" and "after" test data that allows you to pinpoint test problems resulting from severely out of calibration conditions. QTS recommends annual calibration of ASRU’s. We also provide ASRU loaner units if needed. Don’t risk your ASRU! Call QTS!

Did you ever wish you could omit probes from nets that will be tested by boundary scan? This could reduce fixture cost, convert 50 mil probes to larger sizes and make room on the board for important test points. It could simplify module pin assignment, making the board fit into a smaller configuration. You could omit test points at random but you risk a loss of test coverage. Analyzing manually could take days. We solved the problem by writing a special design-for-test utility that groups nets according to their boundary scan test capability.

The groups are 1) mandatory nets required for boundary scan testing such as TAP port pins and power connections; 2) nets without boundary scan cells; 3) nets with only one boundary scan cell; and 4) nets with two or more compatible boundary scan cells. The last group are the nets that may be safely "no-probed" because you can use boundary scan to pass vectors from output cells to input cells. Nets containing only input cells or only outputs will be placed in category 3. Since our new program does not require assigning physical locations to the test points, the analysis may be conducted before layout takes place or on preliminary layouts.

Where do we start? (At the beginning of course.) So many people are coming and going. Jeff Smith, formerly of Quality One and Wirepro, has joined QA Technologies as a sales manager. Kim Lucas, formerly of Circuit Check and Wirepro, has left the business but lives happily in downtown Boston. (If you can afford to live in downtown Boston, you’re happy.) Mary Fleming has resigned from Circuit Check and moved to Florida. Mary used to work for QTS back in the 80’s. How about Jeff Rogers? Jeff was a sales manager for ECT in the Dallas area. After being laid off at ECT, he joined Test Technology Associates in Lewisville, Texas but they laid him off too! Now Jeff has turned his favorite pastime into a new career. He’s selling Harley Davidson motorcycles. I guess you could say that he went from an ICT Hell to Hog Heaven.

Wait, there’s more. Roger Schrayer, a founder of Test Technology, has started a new business involving flying probe testers. Remember Don Wexler, founder of Automated Test Engineering? He’s working for some company called "Apple" but I don’t think it has anything to do with fruit. Scott Cufr, formerly National Sales Manager for ECT has joined the Plexus sales organization. Anita Jones was the first casualty of the Southwest Test/Circuit Check deal. She was laid off from Circuit Check the day before the merger.

Dave Crook retired from Agilent and joined Hach Company here in Loveland as a product designer. Dave is the guy who designed the ASRU, invented 6-wire guarding and testjet!! Kamron Firooz, long time GM of the ICT business for Agilent in Loveland, has moved to a new position. The new boss is a guy named Dan Zimmerle.

According to Groucho Marx: "Any man who says he can "see through" women, is missing a lot." Groucho is also the author of this famous joke: "While on Safari in Africa, I shot an elephant in my pajamas…. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know!"

As you know, the latest 3070 software doesn’t support the 725 series controllers. QTS recommends the B180L or C240 as your best choice for upgrading. You get more processor speed, more disc space, a faster SCSI and more DAT tape storage. QTS offers these upgrades to licensed 3070 users who wish to transfer their license to the faster and more supportable controllers. Here’s what you get:

B180L or C240 processor with ED Graphics

128 Meg of RAM with an option to upgrade to 768 Megabytes

9 Gigabyte internal disc

Internal DDS2 DAT tape with a DDS3 option

17" Color Monitor

Lan card, HP-IB Interface

Cables and connectors

Why is it that if company A buys company B, the press releases are guaranteed not to explain what actually happened? Press releases seem to speculate about the future instead. With apologies to our good friends at Circuit Check, here is our condensation of their press release announcing the purchase of Southwest Test:

"For immediate release: (all press releases are for immediate release, otherwise they wouldn’t release them!)

…announced…acquisition…purchase…assets…leader…fixtures…broad array...strategic combination…test solutions…leading provider…test solutions… strong presence… carved out…strong… presence…looking forward…strategy…combination…broadest array…landscape…broadest spectrum…geographic presence…main focus…strategies…focused…working together…dynamic organization…excited."

It’s comforting to know that the combined companies will be broadly focused. That’s always a winning strategy.

QTS spare parts customers receive free technical support when troubleshooting HP3065 and 3070 system problems. We stock all the parts including the computer boards and disc drives. We’ll help you decide which part to replace by telephone consultation. If the parts we recommend don’t fix the problem, we’ll take them back, no charge. We offer same day shipment on most items. Contact QTS for an up-to-date price list.