An open question on Slashdot asks the world's geeks to tell their hairiest IT improvisation stories — power supplied by coat-hanger wire, cables run down storm-drains — and a foot-powered backup system:
I used to be the internal LAN support at a large multinational hardware vendor. Most of the company was on Mac desktops and Unix servers, but the accounts department felt they were mavericks who could run their own IT, so they opted for DOS, Lotus 1-2-3 and a Netware server. OK guys, if you think you can do it better, then maybe you can. Go for it.
They also figured that server backups were probably a good idea, since they routinely handled millions of pounds of transactions per day in that one office alone.
And since they were accountants, they naturally picked the cheapest backup solution they could dig up, which was a 40-dollar backup box that used VHS video cassettes, underneath a beancounter's desk, right by his foot. I shit you not: every few weeks, it would occur to him that a backup hadn't been done in a while, so he'd shove the VHS cassette into the backup box with his foot, then nudge the start button with his foot, and return to counting beans. The cassette would pop out when it was finished, and that was proof positive for them of a job done properly. They never even bought a second VHS cassette. Amazingly, the thing never stretched to snapping point, but it was undoubtedly unusable for restores (it never occurred to them to do test restores), making it genuinely much, much worse than useless.
