Tandem Computers were the first large computer systems I worked on professionally. The Tandem Application Language (TAL) was the first full-time professional programming language I worked in. I have very fond memories of it. The combination of the language with their hardware could do some amazing things. Today we mostly do the same things with racks of commodity hardware, but for the time it was pretty cool stuff. Tandem was known for fault-tolerant hardware, “dual-ported” hard drives, redundant everything, and cross-cpu checkpointing software. Back in the day, I got a fault tolerant coffee mug with the Tandem logo on it.

It failed yesterday. After 15 years of good service. Not bad.

Tandem Mug

Tandem Mug

But since it was fault-tolerant and “dual ported” the cup of coffee was finished safely and without any catastrophic results.
So long Tandem mug. It was good to know ya.