Lander alarms

[Selsport69]

Cheese wedges? We used to call them the Modern Coffin Box.

[SaysLes]

In 1980, I left Further Education and entered Lander Alarms in Glasgow as their training officer.  A couple of years later the Mighty Micro appeared and the first successful cpu based panel was the Micro Nine made, in house, by the workshop at Polmadie.  Soon after, the Galaxy500 was born, based on the CPA6 design.  The guy behind the panel's concept was my line manager Jim Green.  The guy who helped develop the software and test it on site then train the engineers was yours truly.  I travelled all over the country demonstrating the new concept of programmability but only with the forerunner to the Galaxy, the Micro Nine.

Eventually I taught the alarm course in Paisley's Reid Kerr College at the start of SITO's NVQ/SVQ.

Hope this helps with the history of the trade.  Now Power over IP is my interest and configuring routers.

Sinclair's first home computer was launched at the same time as the Micro Nine.  Now we have more than enough keeping up with these students and others who programme viruses.

Linux is the answer to that lot and guess what?  It's FREE!

Saysles

[beyondtheGalaxy]

lander was indeed the birthplace of Microtec security. microtec was formed in 1990 after a management buyout by Jim Green and Jim Gemmel. The micro 6 & micro 8 panels etc were the forerunners the the executive systems. i.e exec 50, exec 250 & exec 1000. the Galaxy range was based directly on the exec systems both of which were dam fine control systems. having spent Many years as tech support engineer from microtec to Ademco thru to Honeywell I was proud to have been able to provide many a solution to installers at all hours of the day and middle of the night. some of you may well have woken me at crazy hours on the 24 hour support line. I was always glad to give a solution to any situation. the beauty of the good ol galaxy was that there was many solutions to any situation. )

[Nova-Security]

Some history there, never had to use the 24hr support number but when we did have a problem the tech support in scotland was the best ever, phone up with a strange request for links somebody would do set it up write down the configuration and email to us.

 

Ademco was going to give us as our firmware then they sold to honeywell who aren't interested, shame really good panel but now need to find an alternative due to the price rise.

[beyondtheGalaxy]

yeh we always tried to make sure we knew the answer before you asked the question had to be totaly switched on and top of the game. if we didnt have the answer immeadiatly we would get it n give you 100% till we got your solution. ther was problems getting thru and it just got worse the lines were always very busy but they just kept buying more manufacturers, getting rid of thier tech support and giving the extra work to us which meant more products to support with the same five or 6 guys. they didnt see that more products to support meant more calls so more engineers required. and the americans wanted a call centre instead of a technical service and suppprt centre. god only knows what state it is now that they have moved it overseas. the product knowledge has been diluted to some low levels over the past few years.. its sad..

[norman]

You've just described the British Security Industry in general...

[charlie6]

"...the beauty of the good ol galaxy was that there was many solutions to any situation..."

That's interesting, any examples off the top of your head ?