An early morning fire in a lower floor spread to the computer room of First Data Corporation. The fire was so intense that the steel beams of the third floor sagged.

The third floor held the operational datacenter containing millions of dollars worth of Digital Equiment Corporation PDP-10 computer systems.

One systems programmer arrived at Digital Equipment Corporation's Marlboro factory, tired and smelly. He said

"True. I'd been at the old First Data office on Totten Pond Road since very early Sunday morning, the first time the fire marshall would allow us back in the building. There were still two PDP-10s that worked and we'd just gotten power rerouted to them (the fire had spread up the main power bus shaft in the building). Fortunately one of the systems that still worked was our development machine, so I could do a backup of our proprietary version of the monitor. This tape (and a DCA communications box) was what I arrived with early that Monday morning in Marlboro."

Now that I'm thinking about it, these days it would be unusual for a manufacturer to give over its facilities to a customer for months 24x7 so they could continue to stay in business. Back then, it was a nobrainer making that decision.

The amazing thing was that the decision was made over the weekend. IIRC, it was Ken Olsen who ultimately gave the okay. When I arrived in Marlboro very early in the morning (it was still dark) there were people already there ready to help. We ran the Marlboro demo machine as a First Data customer system for months, a courtesy which helped save the our company.