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Roger Lunsford's IBM history

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IBM Career and Experiences

I have been working for IBM since April 1982 (gees, how time passes). I started out working on mainframe water cooled systems (enough of this, the more I write the older I start to feel......no, I am not going to start talking about 'CORE' memory!). My career started with IBM in good ol' Poughkeepsie, New York. Job changes, temporary assignments, and the like moved me back and forth between Kingston, NY and Poughkeepsie (a good thing that Kingston and Poughkeepsie are only separated by 25 miles on either side of the Hudson River). As time would have it, after 10+ years we moved out to Good, Sunny, Endicott New York area (which, contrary to some jokes/etc about the weather, is probably one of the best places in the entire USA to raise a family, as well a pretty darn good place to live!).

Areas in IBM I have worked include:

  • Defect Isolation and Failure Analysis - Defect Isolation on TCM's (Thermal Conduction Modules) and VLSI card logic down to chip and component level for repair or failure analysis. Interesting job.
  • 3081/3084 Systems Test - The first main frame with water cooled TCM's! The job started hooking the entire system(s) up and making sure everything worked as per specs...from the ips/pdf power supply to running testcases with voltage/thermal biasing. The initial power bugs after hook-up were always the favorites. From here, the machines got covered and off to the customers.
  • 3090 Systems Test - Alot like 308X testing but it seemed the technological advances were taking away alot of the technicle skills required. I worked a bit in the 3370 DASD area to expand on I/O skills and understanding.
  • SME Process Development - This was my start into the software world. Instead of running the testcases on the mainframes, I was now working with engineering and writing the testcases myself. This was also my introduction to customer service, as we also had to support both internal and external customers that used our testcases....IBM World Wide! The working hours now changed to customer hours.
  • Software Support - After almost 2 years of intense, fulltime, software science college classes and IBM Internal schooling, it was into the software support arena. Working directly with customers, diagnosing software (its never the hardware!) problems, providing immediate problem circumvention, sometime coding the apar fix and following through until official release if needed, are just some of the challenging, rewarding, and stimulating areas of the software support world!

    I started software support in GDDM, and DPPX OS area. I have been in the VM Software Support area over 5 years now. Some of my favorite areas in VM include *Monitor, VM/PRF , RTM/ESA , and OSA/SF .

    How To Contact Me

    • E-MAIL: LUNSFORD@US.IBM.COM
    • FAX: 607/752-1162
    • or call into the IBM VM/ESA Level2 Support Center!!