ISS Technology Update, Volume 9, Number 2

5
Meet the Expert—Bill Hanlon
Bill Hanlon’s title is Master, ISS Integrated System Test, but his unofficial title should
be “One of a kind” because of his unique skills and mode of transportation—he
drives to work everyday in his reliable 1957 GMC pickup truck. Bill joined
Compaq in 1987 as a member of the third level support organization. Now, he
writes test software for new server products and helps to debug problems that his
software discovers. Unlike his pickup truck, his job is unpredictable. He says
“When I arrive at work in the morning, I often have no idea what I’ll be working on
that day.”
Name: Bill Hanlon
Title:
Master, ISS Integrated System Test
Years at HP: 23
Military Service: U.S. Air Force
Accordin
g to his manager, Randy Dow, “Bill has deep technical knowledge of
servers that ranges from customer usage down to the inner workings of processors
and chipsets. He uses this knowledge to develop tools that stress the systems as well
as the chipsets and processors in unique and realistic ways. Bill’s years of
experience tracking down elusive problems combined with his willingness and
ability to whip up new tools as needed make him a highly sought-after debug
expert in ISS.”
His interests and inspiration
Bill’s interest in how things work stemmed from what he describes as being “the oldest son of a self-educated tinkerer.” He
started college at an early age but left to join the U.S. Air Force, where he served for over 3 years and achieved the rank of
sergeant. Bill loves to ski, but wishes he were a lot better at it.
He and his wife Cathy (married since 1967), have one daughter, Andrea, and two granddaughters, Lauren (13) and
Megan (11). Megan is an inspiration. She has cerebral palsy, yet she attends 5th grade with children without disabilities.
Megan manipulates a powered chair and communicates through a computer by using a device that converts her eye
movements to mouse actions. Remarkably, Megan also skis with the aid of a sit-ski and the help of the people at
Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center. Bill constantly keeps his eyes open for technologies that will help her.
Old school programmer
Bill is a self-described “old school” programmer and he says that the upkeep of his pickup truck symbolizes his style of
programming—it takes a bit of time to keep it running but it is very satisfying. Years ago, he wrote a program (on his own
time) to replace an ineffective application that Compaq was using as a corporate telephone book. Bill’s program became
the company standard for more than 10 years and was still being used after 17 years because it had features that are still
not available in Outlook.
Looking out for customers
Bill’s direct customer is usually a hardware design engineer who needs a specific test performed in a hurry. If the system fails
Bill’s test, he reviews the logic analyzer traces with the engineer until they figure out what went wrong. Bill does not receive
direct external customer input, but he protects customer interests by ensuring the quality of the finished product, sort of like a
“customer ombudsman.” He writes tests in assembly language and runs them in a DOS environment to avoid interference
from the OS. Running these low-level, but extreme, tests in the DOS environment allows Bill to use up to 256 processor cores
and up to 4 terabytes of memory.
Doing whatever it takes
Randy sums him up pretty well: “You’ll find that Bill is always eager to help out in any way he can and even though he is a
highly ranked technical engineer, you’ll find him doing whatever it takes to help solve the problems brought to him.”