A humorous story from the 90's, when, working as a Systems Integrator, I have built a Network Management System for an array of Microwave Stations that were supplied by the company that I was working for back then.

The project started as an emergency because the customer refused to accept the system, unless it was accompanied by a graphics NMS. The customer considered that the manufacturer provided command-line interface (CLI) was not enough for their expectations.

A deadline was set to three weeks! I identified the fastest workaround as an implementation of a SCADA board in an industrial PC, that would collect all dry-contact signals from one of the microwave stations, as well as controlled actions by the activation of switches. Luckily, the microwave stations allowed the control of remote stations who participated in this array of stations, via an internal control channel. Therefore, with one connection to one station, I could control all stations of the link.

One software developer started working on the Graphical User Interface, which would be a mimic of the microwave station front panel, based on Visual Basic. An industrial PC and an Advantech PCL-720 SCADA board were ordered with an expedited procedure.

To cut a long story short, the system was prepared on time, a group of customer representatives came for training, the system was shipped and installed and the entire project was accepted, making us all very happy!!!.

After a couple of weeks, we received a box, containing the board, along with a short ultimatum:

Board Dead-on-Arrival. Repair immediately.

Just have a look on the board situation.

Nobody has ever found out what caused this hole. But certainly, it was not DoA . Well, although it was easy to repair the board, I could not send it back to the customer at such a condition. Luckily, there was sufficient profit margin for the entire project, so I shipped a new one and kept this one in my Archive of Terror. Is this the way to deal with difficult customers?