Vintage HP Disc Memory Division T-Shirt 1983

 

I worked for the HP Disc Memory Division in Boise Idaho, during the summers of 1981, '82, and '83. It gave me the money to almost afford to go to Whitman College prior to attending Caltech the following two years under a 3-2 Engineering Program.

In the Summer of 1981, I worked with a microscope 8 hours a day soldering wires on disc heads. 

The Summers of '82 & '83, I worked on the HP 7933/7935 disc drive (Wikipedia) assembly line. I did multiple jobs, wherever they needed me: installing blower motors, making the assembly the disc packs went in ("the tub"). The units were the size of a small dishwasher. And they were finicky to make. They had 7 platters, 14 heads, so a lot could go wrong. When they failed burn-in testing, they'd be sent back to change out a possible defective part. It kept us very busy! 

I think the shirt above is my only one to survive to this day. It has the HP logo on the front. On back it has a person holding up a barbell with words depicting issues encountered. The text says "B.F.D. does it under pressure". BFD referred to the unofficial name HP gave the HP7933/35 units: "Big F'in Drive". At 404MB, it was much larger than previous units (the HP7920 had 50MB).

If anyone is interested in this piece of Hewlett-Packard history, contact me on Twitter @anne_engineer. BlueSky at @anneb@bsky.social or Mastodon @anneb@octodon.social.