byron@pyr.gatech.EDU (Byron A Jeff) (01/14/89)
First there were the Egyptians, then the Chinese, then the Greeks and those pushy Romans. Now, it's time for the mythology of the COMPUTER! I am looking for stories. Heard any tales second- or third-hand that sound possibly true but that "happened to a friend of a friend" in different places at different times? Good God, man or woman, that's a computer myth! I'm also interested in stories that might have started in actual fact but that have become so popular that they keep popping up. For instance, did you hear about the zero-sum check? Someone gets a computerized bill from a credit card company saying they owe the company zero dollars and zero cents. They ignore it but keep getting bills and increasingly nasty computerized notes, so they finally write out a check for zero dollars and zero cents and send it in, and the computer never bothers them again. Or, there's the story about the guy who falls asleep in front of his terminal with an ELIZA program running and his boss logs on and thinks he's talking to him but is actually talking to the program, and gets pissed off. OR, there's the dilemma in which computers keep crashing because an operator wears a silk slip that gives off static electricity like nobody's business, OR the bank teller who embezzles millions from his bank by creating a file to collect the fractions of pennies that the bank rounds off from accounts. Some story categories are: 1. machines going physically berserk. 2. women/computers/sex/sexism and/or romance. 3. sabotage. 4. breaking security (no, I don't have classified clearance, goddammit!) 5. great hacks. 6. computer gods (such as Norbert Weiner, a genius in AI who lost his family when they moved to a new house and he forgot where it was). 7. tales of massive catastrophe due to seemingly mysterious means that turn out to be something strange, like magnetized pollen. Of course, there are more categories. Got a great tale you want to share? Reply to isusevm@pyr.gatech.edu. If you'd rather talk, leave your phone number and I'll try to give you a ring. Karla Jennings c/o BAJ -- Another random extraction from the mental bit stream of... Byron A. Jeff Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332 Internet: byron@pyr.gatech.edu uucp: ...!gatech!pyr!byron
isusevm@pyr.gatech.EDU (Vernard C. Martin) (01/26/89)
First there were the Egyptians, then the Chinese, then the Greeks and those pushy Romans. Now, it's time for the mythology of the COMPUTER! I am looking for stories. Heard any tales second- or third-hand that sound possibly true but that "happened to a friend of a friend" in different places at different times? Good God, man or woman, that's a computer myth! I'm also interested in stories that might have started in actual fact but that have become so popular that they keep popping up. For instance, did you hear about the zero-sum check? Someone gets a computerized bill from a credit card company saying they owe the company zero dollars and zero cents. They ignore it but keep getting bills and increasingly nasty computerized notes, so they finally write out a check for zero dollars and zero cents and send it in, and the computer never bothers them again. Or, there's the story about the guy who falls asleep in front of his terminal with an ELIZA program running and his boss logs on and thinks he's talking to him but is actually talking to the program, and gets pissed off. OR, there's the dilemma in which computers keep crashing because an operator wears a silk slip that gives off static electricity like nobody's business, OR the bank teller who embezzles millions from his bank by creating a file to collect the fractions of pennies that the bank rounds off from accounts. Some story categories are: 1. machines going physically berserk. 2. women/computers/sex/sexism and/or romance. 3. sabotage. 4. breaking security (no, I don't have classified clearance, goddammit!) 5. great hacks. 6. computer gods (such as Norbert Weiner, a genius in AI who lost his family when they moved to a new house and he forgot where it was). 7. tales of massive catastrophe due to seemingly mysterious means that turn out to be something strange, like magnetized pollen. Of course, there are more categories. Got a great tale you want to share? Reply to isusevm@pyr.gatech.edu. If you'd rather talk, leave your phone number and I'll try to give you a ring. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Karla Jennings This account is temporarily being used as a collection point for mail. isusevm@pyr.gatech.edu
pt@geovision.uucp (Paul Tomblin) (01/29/89)
In article <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> isusevm@pyr.gatech.edu.UUCP (Vernard C. Martin) writes: >[asking for computer myths] I can remember a few that supposedly happened where I used to work before I started there: 1) A computer kept crashing, and every time service was called, it worked fine. It turned out that one of the users would come in, sit down at the console and put his papers and stuff on the top covering the cooling vents. When it crashed, he'd pick up his stuff and leave, removing the evidence. Service people didn't figure this one out until they decided to watch him work to see why it crashed. 2) We had an IBM cluster controller controlling some 3270 terminals. We paid $5000 for an upgrade that would allow more users to be connected to the controller. The IBM service rep came in and REMOVED a board, that was put there to deliberately slow things down. 3) (This one happened to me) A Northern Telecom 3270 terminal caught fire, with flames coming out of the top. I guess I was doing some hot stuff. I was not putting stuff on top of the terminal cooling slots. 4) Somebody working on an Airline Reservation System, trying to get maximum response out of the machine, was looking at a OS listing and found a delay loop that was executed by a timer interrupt every 100th of a second. Removing it brought the performance up, but they had to replace one of the chips in the machine that wasn't fast enough. I don't know if these classify, but it's the best I could come up with. -- Paul Tomblin, Second Officer, Golgafrinchan B Ark | o o Are we UUCP: nrcaer!cognos!geovision!pt ?? | v having Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here aren't | \_/ fun, yet? necessarily even mine! |
jackg@tekirl.TEK.COM (Jack Gjovaag;6160;50-321;LP=A) (02/01/89)
In article <532@geovision.UUCP> geovision!pt writes: >2) We had an IBM cluster controller controlling some 3270 terminals. We >paid $5000 for an upgrade that would allow more users to be connected to >the controller. The IBM service rep came in and REMOVED a board, that >was put there to deliberately slow things down. In a similar vein, the GE 415 and 425 CPUs were identical except that the 415 had an extra wire that slowed the clock down a bit. To upgrade to the 425, after paying your money, the wire was removed. Some users knew about this and one of them made up a realistic looking letter supposedly from GE saying something to the effect : "CAUTION. Do not remove the wire from pin 4AB to 7FL in the CPU enclosure. This wire is located approximately 7 inches up from the bottom of the backplane in bay 2 and should not be removed by using a GE 112-3 wire unwrapping tool, first not removing the wrapping from 4AB, then pulling the wire from under the other wiring to its bound end at 7FL, followed by not unwrapping the bound end from 7FL. Not removing this wire will result in the normal clockspeed which is 1.6 times slower than with the wire removed and will not cause corresponding increases in system throughput." Naturally most of these wires got removed. Another interesting but kludgy fix to a problem came from a user of an IBM 7044. The 7044 had a HALT instruction that stopped the CPU clock. The user was doing some realtime processing or something of the sort and didn't like the idea of the CPU ever being able to stop itself. He asked IBM how much it would cost to disable the instruction and they gave him some large quote which contained the implicit message "We don't want to do it and this price is set high enough to make you change your mind about the request." The user didn't want to pay the money so he fixed up a photodiode over the light on the console that was on when the CPU was running and hooked it up to a solenoid that would push the RUN button whenever the light went out. The cost was a couple of dollars. Jack Gjovaag Tek Labs
ham@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Bob Hamilton) (02/01/89)
> 2) We had an IBM cluster controller controlling some 3270 terminals. We > paid $5000 for an upgrade that would allow more users to be connected to > the controller. The IBM service rep came in and REMOVED a board, that > was put there to deliberately slow things down. "Pulling out the slow-down boards" is an old IBM marketing tactic. When I worked at Memorex, I heard IBM did it when we upgraded one of the CPU's in the data center. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to characterize the ethics of a company which would build slow-down boards into its products in the first place. I once worked in a computer center (not at Memorex) where the following actually happened. However I got some of the details second hand, since it happened around 06:00, and I came in around 10:00. So don't sue me. The computer room contained, among other mainframes, an Amdahl 470 V8. One morning a component inside the CPU, near the floor, caught fire. Flames were fanned upward by the cooling fans, and each burning component set the next higher component alight until the box was blazing merrily. Now Amdahl machines have really good error correction built into them, and they do single bit error correction in real-time (i.e. a single bit error arrives inverted, thus correct). The memory in this machine was inter- leaved in such a way that the burning modules all represented a single bit in the affected data fetches. Therefore, although seriously damaged by the fire, the machine was still running (correctly) at full speed. This condition persisted until one of the computer operators arose to leave the console (which faced away from the burning computer). Upon seeing the flames, the operator shut down the computer and called in the emergency. Amdahl people appeared forthwith to fix the machine, and we were running production on it by mid-afternoon. (Fabulous service! I understand there was no charge. Amdahl is reported to have said "Our machines are not supposed to burn, and if they do, we fix 'em free.") We WERE a little curious to know why the smoke detector above the machine didn't sound the alarm, so that vendor was summoned. His verdict: "The sensor is upwind of the computer." So the smoke detectors were repositioned to accommodate the aerodynamics of the computer room. Oh, we also turned the operators's consoles to face the computers. --Bob Hamilton Disclaimer: "Computers? What are they?" Software Methods Lab I didn't say it. If I did, Hewlett Packard Company I didn't mean it. And besides, Cupertino, California I was quoted out of context. (408) 447-5113 ham@hpda
dela@canopus.ee.rochester.edu (Del Armstrong) (02/01/89)
In article <532@geovision.UUCP> geovision!pt writes: > >2) We had an IBM cluster controller controlling some 3270 terminals. We >paid $5000 for an upgrade that would allow more users to be connected to >the controller. The IBM service rep came in and REMOVED a board, that >was put there to deliberately slow things down. Another unverified bit of folklore: I've heard several times that the Vax 11/750 had a delay loop in the microcode, to insure that it would run slower than the Vax 11/780. Any DEC microcoders out there who can authoritativly put this legend to rest? Del Armstrong Internet : dela@ee.rochester.edu UUCP : ...allegra!rochester!ur-valhalla!dela Twisted pair: (716) 275-5342 Last resort : Hopeman 407 Electrical Engineering University of Rochester Rochester, N.Y. 14627 +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
baum@Apple.COM (Allen J. Baum) (02/02/89)
[] >In article <1798@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu> dela@ee.rochester.edu (Del Armstrong) writes: >In article <532@geovision.UUCP> geovision!pt writes: >> >>2) We had an IBM cluster controller controlling some 3270 terminals. We >>paid $5000 for an upgrade that would allow more users to be connected to >>the controller. The IBM service rep came in and REMOVED a board, that >>was put there to deliberately slow things down. I have been told that IBM has been guilty of this kind of thing more than once. I know that microcode for the 360/25 (low end model) could be changed to give it the performance of a 360/40. Supposedly the 370/145 had a microcode delay loop that was put in there so that when the /148 was announced (with virtual memory), it would not run slower than the otherwise identical /145. Of course, IBM was not the only culprit. A friend who once worked for Burroughs told me that in order to sell a reduced-cost version of one machine, they had to add a whole board of logic to produce delayed versions and phases of clocks just to slow the (original) fast machine down. Since it was slower, they could sellit for less! -- baum@apple.com (408)974-3385 {decwrl,hplabs}!amdahl!apple!baum
woolsey@nsc.nsc.com (Jeff Woolsey) (02/02/89)
Artificially slowing down faster machines is very common in the mainframe business. There was a Cyber 170/825 at the CDC Demonstration Center that had an extra switch inside labelled 815/825 (take your pick). -- -- When it comes to humility, I'm the greatest. -- Bullwinkle J. Moose Jeff Woolsey woolsey@nsc.NSC.COM -or- woolsey@umn-cs.cs.umn.EDU
karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) (02/02/89)
In article <11630010@hpsmtc1.HP.COM>, ham@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Bob Hamilton) writes: > > 2) We had an IBM cluster controller controlling some 3270 terminals. We > > paid $5000 for an upgrade that would allow more users to be connected to > > the controller. The IBM service rep came in and REMOVED a board, that > > was put there to deliberately slow things down. On the Tektronix 8560, a multiuser Unix system that could interface to and operate in-circuit emulators, logic analyzers, and such, there was a two-serial-port, 13 MB disk version, and this could be upgraded for something like $13,000 to be a 30 MB disk and four serial ports. (This was a few years ago.) Anyway, some guys over at Ford had it done and all Tek did was replace the two-port serial connector board and a PROM on the disk controller. We duped their PROM and soldered DB-25 connectors into the two unfilled locations in the "two-port" serial board. We booted, formatted, restored and spawned getty on the two new serial ports. Voila, a 4-port 30 MB system for half a day of two guy's time. If Tektronix had sold the 30 MB, 4-port system for the 13 MB, 2-port price, they 8560 would have been a barn burner (at the time) and perhaps have been able to achieve a critical mass of installations for Tektronix to have succeeded in that area. (I guess they still have, but by going with attachments to people's bought-from-DEC VAXes running VMS.) (Unlike most people I knew who used it, by the way, I liked it a lot. It was underpowered and got real slow if things like links had to spill to disk, but you could do fantastic things configuring the emulator from shell scripts and such.) On an 8560 contract I worked, we had a Z8000 Pascal cross-development environment that they'd only sold six copies of! Needless to say, it was unsupported, necessitating assembler a lot of times to get around bugs in code generation involving intermediate 32-bit values during integer calculations being truncated (and sign-screwed) to 16-bits because the compiler generated spurious 16-to-32-bit sign-extends, but I digress... One of my best friends worked for MDI Qantel field service for a long time, and they sold a 150 MB disk drive that could be upgraded to 300 MB by flipping a switch and reformatting the disk. This "upgrade" cost about $15000. They also had a "3 + 3" and a "6 + 6", which were 3 MB fixed plus 3 MB removable and a similar 6 MB version. To upgrade a 3+3 to a 6+6, the field engineer would cut a trace on the controller board and reformat. Needless to say the 150/300 disk came after these guys. I think flipping the switch is clearly superior :-( -- -- uunet!sugar!karl | "We've been following your progress with considerable -- karl@sugar.uu.net | interest, not to say contempt." -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV -- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018
desnoyer@Apple.COM (Peter Desnoyers) (02/03/89)
Along the lines of the burning Amdahl - Someone told me that one of the big old Cyber systems (went by the name of "Star", perhaps?) had racks and racks of memory, and that the power supplies in these memories had reliability problems. Evidently the filter capacitors would fail short every so often. I am told that they investigated several ways of detecting these shorts and bringing them to the operators attention. They tried an ammeter on the console - it didn't work. (It would go from perhaps 2000 to 2050 amps - not a noticeable increase.) Evidently the solution was to put a smoke detector in the top of each rack, and wire each of them to a light on the operator's panel, the assumption being that if a memory bank was smoking, it required service. [This recounting is n'th hand where n >> 1, and probably contains serious factual errors. Corrections by those who know are invited.] Peter Desnoyers
walker@ficc.uu.net (Walker Mangum) (02/03/89)
Back in the '70s, MODCOMP (Modular Computer Systems) sold a real hot mini called the MODCOMP II. The processor had 16 prioritized hardware interrupt levels. Levels 12-15 were "optional", purchased as the "Executive Features Option", for (best as I recall) about $3000. Actually, ALL processors had this option. There wasn't even a switch or other method to disable it. The only difference between processors purchased with or without the "Executive Features Option" was the price! -- Walker Mangum | Adytum, Incorporated phone: (713) 333-1509 | 1100 NASA Road One UUCP: uunet!ficc!walker (walker@ficc.uu.net) | Houston, TX 77058 Disclaimer: $#!+ HAPPENS
lm03_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Larry Moss) (02/03/89)
I heard one story about a guy that was using an Apple IIe at work a few years ago. He was ready to give up with computers because every disk he ever tried to use would lose all of the files on it. It turned out that he kept little reminder notes attached to the disk drive - with magnets.
albert@endor.harvard.edu (David Albert) (02/03/89)
>2) We had an IBM cluster controller controlling some 3270 terminals. >paid $5000 for an upgrade that would allow more users to be connected to >the controller. You had a cluster that could control three thousand two hundred and seventy terminals at once and you wanted an upgrade?! :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ David Albert | Roses are red, UUCP: ...{think, rutgers}!harvard!albert | Violets are blue, INTERNET: albert@harvard.harvard.edu | The sky is bleen, SNAILNET: 33 Oxford St./Cambridge MA 02138 | And the oceans are grue.
jonathan@itcatl.UUCP (Jonathan Peterson) (02/03/89)
> >2) The IBM service rep came in and REMOVED a board, that > >was put there to deliberately slow things down. > > In a similar vein, the GE 415 and 425 CPUs were identical except that > the 415 had an extra wire that slowed the clock down a bit. Is it true that the phone company designed touch-tone keyboards upside- down from calcutaor, etc numeric keypads because data entry people could punch faster than the first generation switching systems could read? #include <stdisclaimer.h> jonathan@itcatl.gatech.edu| "There are things you don't know about me Dottie... DISC Access | Things you wouldn't understand, Products Group, Inc. | things you couldn't understand, Atlanta, GA | things you SHOULDN'T understand."
jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden) (02/03/89)
In article <768@ur-cc.UUCP> lm03_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Larry Moss) writes: >It turned out that he kept little reminder notes attached to the disk >drive - with magnets. Oh Gawd! Not again! Make it stop! Make it stop! :-) -- "Everything I need to know I learned from watching Gilligan's Island."
saal@sfsup.UUCP (S.Saal) (02/03/89)
I heard of someone that put a computer in the microwave to dry it off. I think one of them, either the microwave or the person that did it, exploded. -- Sam Saal ..!attunix!saal Vayiphtach HaShem et Peah HaAtone
karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) (02/03/89)
In article <319@itcatl.UUCP>, jonathan@itcatl.UUCP (Jonathan Peterson) writes: > Is it true that the phone company designed touch-tone keyboards upside- > down from calcutaor, etc numeric keypads because data entry people could > punch faster than the first generation switching systems could read? Not according to an exhibit I saw at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago (someone in this group probably has access to a Bell Systems Technical Journal article on this matter, a much more definitive source), they laid out the touchtone keypad after a lot of research to find out what worked best for people. They had even tried a triangular configuration, as in: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 -- -- uunet!sugar!karl | "We've been following your progress with considerable -- karl@sugar.uu.net | interest, not to say contempt." -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV -- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (02/03/89)
The Compucolor-II computer (a 4K Z80 based system) from Intecolor was deliberately brain-damaged to keep it from competing with their low-end color terminals. It was possible to make the machine smoke from a simple BASIC program: FOR I=0 TO 255: OUT 6,I: NEXT Apparently the CPU had some control over the power supply. You had to pull the plug to keep it from smoking... just flipping off DC power wasn't enough. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Work: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. `-_-' Home: bigtex!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.uu.net. 'U` Opinions may not represent the policies of FICC or the Xenix Support group.
aem@ibiza.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) (02/04/89)
In <319@itcatl.UUCP>, <jonathan@itcatl.UUCP> wrote: >Is it true that the phone company designed touch-tone keyboards upside- >down from calcutaor, etc numeric keypads because data entry people could >punch faster than the first generation switching systems could read? No. It was done for the same reason many early keyboards had the keys in an alphabetical arrangement rather than qwerty. You can't expect the general population to have familiarity with a given arrangement, so you make it as easy as possible for people who have to look at the keys. aem a.e.mossberg aem@mthvax.miami.edu MIAVAX::AEM (Span) aem@umiami.BITNET (soon) He that complains, acts like a man, like a social being. - Samuel Johnson
aem@ibiza.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) (02/04/89)
Back when TRS-80s had just come out, my friend bought one. One day we were in a Radio Shack, and one of the guys working there gave a diskette to my friend. My friend folded it up and put it in his pocket.... aem a.e.mossberg aem@mthvax.miami.edu MIAVAX::AEM (Span) aem@umiami.BITNET (soon) He that complains, acts like a man, like a social being. - Samuel Johnson
aem@ibiza.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) (02/04/89)
In <4744@sfsup.UUCP>, <saal@/doc/dsg/saalUUCP> wrote: >I heard of someone that put a computer in >the microwave to dry it off. I think >one of them, either the microwave or the >person that did it, exploded. It was a poodle, not a computer. heh heh aem a.e.mossberg aem@mthvax.miami.edu MIAVAX::AEM (Span) aem@umiami.BITNET (soon) He that complains, acts like a man, like a social being. - Samuel Johnson
mthome@bbn.com (Mike Thome) (02/04/89)
In article <1357@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> aem@Mthvax.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) writes: >In <4744@sfsup.UUCP>, <saal@/doc/dsg/saalUUCP> wrote: >>I heard of someone that put a computer in >>the microwave to dry it off. I think >>one of them, either the microwave or the >>person that did it, exploded. >It was a poodle, not a computer. This is a true story - The lady who owned the well-done dog sued Amana (really! Anyone know (1) for how much $$, and (2) if she won?) The only other good (& also true) microwave story I know is: The Amazing Randi, in his Big Sting of the Psychic Researchers Operation had two young unknown magicians pose as psychics to be researched... one of the feats of mentalist powers they were asked to demonstrate was "to do something" to a pair of digital watches. Well, they stared and kneeded the watched without effect until lunch, when they palmed 'em and nuked 'em for a minute on high. After lunch the researchers were astounded!
spain@Alliant.COM (Dave Spain) (02/04/89)
> Another unverified bit of folklore: I've heard several times that > the Vax 11/750 had a delay loop in the microcode, to insure that it > would run slower than the Vax 11/780. > > Del Armstrong I spent 3 years at DEC writing micro-code level diagnostics for the 11/750, which often entailed thumbing through the micro-code listings to see how certain things were done, and I cannot remember running into any delay loops. There was a bit in the microword that extended one of the major clocks to allow certain slower functions to complete. Perhaps this is what got this folklore started. However, the major machine cycle time was considerably slower for the 750 vs the 780 (If memory serves, I believe this was 320ns vs 200ns, not counting extended clocks and FPA operations), a limitation imposed by the technology (i.e. those early 400-gate bipolar gate-arrays) and not by the microcode. Dave Spain
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/04/89)
The GE 625/635 originally had no logic to detect unassigned op codes.
This, needless to say, was not a happy situation for reliability
with users constantly running new, untested programs. About the same
time we were designing logic to detect and trap these op codes, one
of the engineers decided to do a systematic study to see what they
all did. On at least one system there was at least one op code that
would repeatably cause a circuit breaker to trip in one of the power
supplies.
The 625 was convertible to the twice-as-fast 635 by removing one wire.
It wasn't originally planned to be this way; originally the 625 was to
be sold with 2 microsecond memory, while the 635 was to use 1 microsec
memory, which at the time was much more expensive. But by the time
the systems got into full production the price of 1 microsec memory had
come down to match the price of 2 microsec memory. Only a few of the
slower machines had been sold, and the maintenance organization didn't
want to have to stock parts for so many different kinds of memory;
so they said use one microsec memory for everything and just slow it
down for the slower machine. (Memory was bought from two or three
outside vendors, so there were already enough different kinds of memory
parts to stock!).
Then there was an even slower 615, which was maybe a dozen wires
different from the 625/635. It was made to suit marketing's need
for a competitor to a particular IBM 360 model number. Simply
slowing the machine didn't satisfy marketing, as it was too fast on
some operations and too slow on others. So there had to be several
changes to the timing logic to make it just slow enough but not too
slow. These were easy to do because the machine didn't use a clock
oscillator; timing was controlled by pulses going through a number of
tapped delay lines. So it was a matter of choosing the right taps
on each delay line.
Quite a number of the 635s in the field used two independent memory
controllers, each covering half the address range. We tried a two-wire
change to allow these machines to run with interleaved memories. It
turned out the speedup was only a couple of percent, so we didn't release
it to the field. The logic was simply so well optimized for 1 microsec
memory that increasing the memory bandwidth by itself didn't gain
anything.
As long as we're talking about selling the same machine for two
different prices, there was the slightly different stunt advertised
by Amdahl some years back. They had a switch out there for the customer
to use that controlled the speed of the machine. I guess it was on rental
machines that the rate you paid depended on the position of the switch.
So they advertised that you could run the machine at the lower rate
so long as performance was adequate; and if you got behind on the workload
you could flip the switch and pay more to get more power.
haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu
haynes@ucscc.bitnet
..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes
"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chroniclepeggy@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Peggy Shambo) (02/04/89)
This is a true story (honest!):
A friend was having a problem with a sticky keyboard for his Mac.
He was talking to another friend who off-handedly suggested putting
into the dishwasher to clean it up. So, my friend did just that!
Needless to say, the keyboard didn't function any too well after
that. :-)
--
_____________________________________________________________________________
Peg Shambo | Sophisticated Lady, I know. | Ellington/
peggy@ddsw1.mcs.com | You miss the Love you had long ago | Mills/Parish
| And when nobody is nigh, you cry. | peggy@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Peggy Shambo) (02/04/89)
Yet another true story:
I was at GE Consulting's Training and Education Center in Albany, NY taking
a course on the PC. Well, there were some inexperienced PC users there,
so we had to go through the "basics" for them (ie, the do's and don't's of
disk handling)
Well, according to the instructor, there had been one student who had driven
up from Bridgeport, CT (corporate offices are there). He had stayed at a
nearby motel overnight, leaving his briefcase in the trunk of the car. (Oh,
let me add that it was sub-zero weather at the time of this incident). In
the morning he arrived at T&E, opened up his briefcase, took out a floppy
disk, inserted into a drive... then *c-r-a-c-k*!!! It shattered into little
pieces.
Gee.. I hope it wasn't critical information on it, with no backup :-)
--
_____________________________________________________________________________
Peg Shambo | Sophisticated Lady, I know. | Ellington/
peggy@ddsw1.mcs.com | You miss the Love you had long ago | Mills/Parish
| And when nobody is nigh, you cry. | robert@jive.sybase.com (Robert Garvey) (02/05/89)
Heard a story about a company whose PC software was being blamed for
the consistent failure to read backup data off floppies. Unable to
determine the cause, they finally sent someone to sit beside the
system's user the entire work day. Nothing unusual was seen until
the very end of the business day when the user took the floppy out of
the drive and started to label it. A blank label was put on and the
disk inserted into the carriage of an electric typewriter...
The humor of the anecdote overrides any concerns for veracity.
--
Robert Garvey Sybase, Inc
robert%sybase.com@sun.com 6475 Christie Ave
{pyramid,pacbell,sun,lll-tis,capmkt}!sybase!robert Emeryville, CA 94608markz@ssc.UUCP (Mark Zenier) (02/05/89)
In article <319@itcatl.UUCP>, jonathan@itcatl.UUCP (Jonathan Peterson) writes: > > Is it true that the phone company designed touch-tone keyboards upside- > down from calcutaor, etc numeric keypads because data entry people could > punch faster than the first generation switching systems could read? No, I dimly remember an article in a jounal ("Ergonomics"? circa 1970) that they tried all sorts of keyboards and found the general public was a few percent faster and more accurate using the 123 456 keyboard. They also had mechanical autodialer phones with the punched cards that could go faster than any fingers, so speed was not the issue. Mark Zenier uunet!nwnexus!pilchuck!ssc!markz markz@ssc.uucp uunet!amc! uw-beaver!tikal!
Zap@cup.portal.com (Tim Philip Cadell) (02/05/89)
. My friend folded up the diskette and put it in his pockete. (from mem) When I used to work at a Radio Shack store, we got a call one day from a man who was trying to load a program (Blackjack, I believe) off of tape into a TRS-80 Model I computer and run it. A friend of mine went to the phone and told him that after he loaded it, type "R U N" and press enter. He got a syntax error and after reading it back, it turned out that he had typed "Are You In?" and pressed enter. No Lie, I WAS THERE. Zap Savage "Go on, pull the other one!"
fpu@taux01.UUCP (32764 fpu account) (02/05/89)
When I was a junior, I worked as a summer student in the Amsterdam branch of a multi-national computer company. The PR department there published a poster advertising the world wide quality of its products; the poster had the word "quality" written on it in 20 different languages. The Hebrew word for quality, which contains five letters, appeared in the poster with three spelling mistakes. -- Ran
msb@sq.uucp (Mark Brader) (02/05/89)
> > Is it true that the phone company designed touch-tone keyboards upside- > > down from calcutaor, etc numeric keypads because data entry people could > > punch faster than the first generation switching systems could read? > > Not according to an exhibit I saw at the Museum ... > they laid out the touchtone keypad after a lot of research to find out > what worked best for people. ... The way I recall reading this (and no, I don't remember where) is that even people familiar with the inverted keypad of the calculator made fewer errors when using the touchtone keypad layout we know today. A possible reason for this occurs to me. Back when those tests were being performed, phone numbers with letters in them were much more common than today. Notice that the alphabet (minus Q and Z) appears in order on a standard touchtone keypad. Anybody know if the people who were tested asked to "dial" numbers like 963-8337, or like WO 3-8337? Mark Brader "Never re-invent the wheel unnecessarily; SoftQuad Inc. (416-963-8337) yours may have corners." utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com -- Henry Spencer
buck@siswat.UUCP (A. Lester Buck) (02/06/89)
In article <35619@bbn.COM>, mthome@bbn.com (Mike Thome) writes: > In article <1357@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> aem@Mthvax.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) writes: > >In <4744@sfsup.UUCP>, <saal@/doc/dsg/saalUUCP> wrote: > >>I heard of someone that put a computer in > >>the microwave to dry it off. I think > >>one of them, either the microwave or the > >>person that did it, exploded. > >It was a poodle, not a computer. > This is a true story - The lady who owned the well-done dog sued Amana > (really! Anyone know (1) for how much $$, and (2) if she won?) > > The only other good (& also true) microwave story I know is: Back to computers and microwaves... When I was a freshman in 1971, all mainframe jobs were submitted on cards. And there was a snack room with microwave oven just down the hall. Well, we were waiting for our jobs to run and were bored, so one of my friends had the idea - What does a microwave oven do to a card deck? We got a deck of blank cards and cooked them for a while. It is a simple physics problem to show that uniformly heating a sphere leads to MUCH higher temperatures at the center compared to the edge. Of course, the card deck *looked* perfectly normal, but inside it was charred, black and brittle. No, we never submitted such a deck. We took pity on the operators and the poor card reader... (And with dozens of drawers of card decks to chose from, it would have been easy to cover our tracks.) And then there are all the stories of "rewind and break tape" macros, (almost) all discovered accidentally. Or the Fortran print statement that did a line of underlines without advancing the paper, repeated that oh, 100 times, then did 100 form feeds. The operator was untangling that printer for some time... This school did have a very well-followed honor system, and it was considered extrememly bad form to affect anyone else adversely. -- A. Lester Buck ...!texbell!moray!siswat!buck
I78BC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Michael Polymenakos) (02/06/89)
How about the young computer salesman giving some client a demonstration of the new electronic word-processor? He loads up a large document, and says: "watch this!". He hits a couple of keys, and converts every "i" in the document to an "a", making the text unreadable. "And it you can change it all back, just like this" he proclaims,subsequently converting all "a"s back to "i", including those that had been "a"s originally. Ofcource, it happened to a friend of a friend of mine.. :-) ----- Another one my father told me: My dad was an electronics engineer in Greece, for a company that imported various high-tech lab equipment. One of them (A HP spectrophotometer, I think) was controlled by a special built-in computer, running optional proprietary software. Each optional package was copy protected. To enforce that, installing the package could only be done by a tech-rep; after the installation, the disks were automatically erased, and the program was kept in battery-backed RAM. Anyway, at some point the computer lost all its programs. A call had to be made to Germany, for new disks to be send as a replacement. My dad could not find the reason for this, and he was really surprised when the client called again, with the same problem next week. Call Germany again, install the disks again, then next week guess what happened: The lab calls again. But there was a definite pattern: The lab always found the system down on a Wednesday morning. Obviously, whatever went wrong happened on Tuesday nights only.... After more than a month of downtime, someone realized that the cleaning lady came to the room every Tuesday night. Someone went to check her and found out that she carried a nine-year old kid with her. The kid had discovered the machine's on-off switch, with a few buttons next to it. When the machine was on, pressing those buttons made cute sounds(aka. audible warnings!) which are supposed to alert you to the fact that holding the button down for a few seconds would completely reset the machine. I guess the kid thought of it as an oversized musical instrument. The mom turned the machine off before she left, erasing error codes etc. No-one knows how much this story cost the lab in downtime..... ------- || | ||| | | || || ||| | || | ||||| || Michael S. Polymenakos BC-CUNY |||| ||| || | ||||| ---------------------- New York ||| || | || || | ||| |
tmca@ut-emx.UUCP (The Anarch) (02/06/89)
This tale is true, I was there. The DEC users group here occasionally has Q+A sessions with a representative of said company which sometimes become complaint and apology sessions. I remember one particular complaint from a Physics professor who claimed that his microVax was having problems with its tk50 tape drive and he had lost a fair quantity of data when the drive allegedly mangled a tape (magnetically, not physically). Some discussion ensued and the professor griped that he also didn't like the way that the screen display "flexed" every time they turned the equipment on next door. It turns out that the "equipment next door" is a largish Tokomak fusion reactor - the electromagnets in the thing have to be seen to be believed. (And this man is a physics professor - phew!) Tim. Clean as a Q-Tip Quiet as nylon.
mercer@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM (Dan Mercer) (02/06/89)
My favorite story is about a satellite link that went haywire every Friday at 3:00 PM. The company that owned the link immediately blamed the software in their communications controllers. Systems analysts were dispatched on site, and try as they did, they couldn't find a software bug that could be responsible. Finally, by dumb luck they found it. A bunch of factory workers let off at 3:00 started their weekend with a parking lot beer party and through their empty cans in the satellite uplink. A shift of security guards fixed that. -- Dan Mercer Reply-To: mercer@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM (Dan Mercer)
terryl@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM (02/06/89)
In article <1357@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> aem@Mthvax.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) writes: >In <4744@sfsup.UUCP>, <saal@/doc/dsg/saalUUCP> wrote: >>I heard of someone that put a computer in >>the microwave to dry it off. I think >>one of them, either the microwave or the >>person that did it, exploded. > >It was a poodle, not a computer. > >heh heh No, no, no... It wasn't a poodle, it was a generic feline animal, which gave us the new, inspirational expression: "Micro-roasted tomcat"... Double heh heh.....(-: Boy Do I Hate Inews !!!! !!!!
frk@frksyv.UUCP (Frank Korzeniewski) (02/06/89)
Several years back I was working at a HMO and we had a lot of 8080 micros using ADM3A dumb terminals. These terminals were so dumb that all they had were upper case character sets. Eventually, upper managment was talked into upgrading them to the ROM's with upper and lower case characters. Well, one day we received this big three foot square box from the terminal manufacturer. Everyone was puzzled as to what they could be sending us. The person with the order said he had asked for 30 lower case options. The ADM3A terminal has an upper and lower clamshell like case. When the box was opened we found they had sent us 30 lower halfs to the terminal case. -- ______________________________________________________________________________ || Frank Korzeniewski, Consulting Suite 137 || || Phone: (415) 799-1819 1564-A Fitzgerald Drive || || UUCP: uunet!frksyv!frk Pinole, CA 94564 ||
vail@tegra.UUCP (Johnathan Vail) (02/06/89)
A friend worked for a company that made IC's. It seemed that every
few months their yeilds would go down to about zero. Analysis of the
failures showed all sorts of organic material was introduced into the
process somewhere but they couldn't figure out where.
One evening someone was working late and came into the lab. There he
found the maintainence crew cooking pizza in the chip curing ovens!
("Gee this pizza tasts funny.." :-D )
"Like a clock, they sent, through, a washing machine:
come around, make it soon, so alone." -- Syd Barrett
_____
| | Johnathan Vail | tegra!N1DXG@ulowell.edu
|Tegra| (508) 663-7435 |
-----cyosta@taux01.UUCP ( Yossie Silverman ) (02/07/89)
I have two stories to relate. Both have to do with IBM machines (the large veriaty): 1) Back when core memory was in use one could "listen" to the memory with a transistor radio. A game amung system programmers was to access memory in such a manner as to produce recognizeble tunes on the radio. 2) Printers produce a buzzing with varying frequency depending on the text being printed (this is because of the rate at which the hammers strike the slugs in the print chain). The same system programmers would also compete to see who could print a job that played specific (and known) tunes. One further story that comes to mind. It is said that specific models of IBM mainframes had a bug whereby "branching backwards over a page boundry to a paged out page would leave the supervisor bit turned on in the PSW in the stored PSW". I never was able to verify this but it makes some sort of sense when you look at the hardware that IBM uses. - Yossie -- Yossie Silverman What did the Caspian sea? National Semiconductor Ltd. (Israel) - Saki UUCP: taux01!yossie@nsc.UUCP NSA LSD FBI KGB PCP CIA MOSAD NUCLEAR MI5 SPY ASSASSINATE SDI -- OOCLAY ITAY
dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (02/07/89)
Here's another one involving circuit breakers. It's quite true... it
bit me several times.
Honeywell used to make a 30 character/second dot-matrix terminal called
the "ROSY". This monster weighed about 50 pounds, was horribly noisy,
and was one of the least-favorite terminals with which to be saddled.
There were a couple of significant "misfeatures":
1) The designers of the terminal were apparently raised in the
half-duplex world. If you hit the terminal's "break" key, the serial
chip would begin to send a "long space" (which is correct) and would
also turn off the receiver logic in order to avoid garbling on
half-duplex circuits (which isn't correct in the full-duplex world).
The receiver was turned off in a very crude fashion... I believe that
its input was clamped for as long as the transmitter was sending a
long-space. When the long-space ended, the receiver was reactivated
and would interpret the next "space" bit it saw as a "start of
character" signal, even if that bit was in the middle of a real ASCII
character (as sent by the computer at the other end of the wire).
Net result... if you hit "break" when speaking over a full-duplex
connection, the terminal would miss several characters and would then
print several characters of garbage.
This was particularly troublesome when this terminal was used with a
system that used "break" to request a soft interrupt (sort of like
control-Z on BSD Unix). The loss and garbling of characters would
frequently obscure the "Break! C to continue" prompt from the current
program, leaving the user waiting for a prompt that never appeared.
2) Early models of the ROSY had a nice, undocumented feature. When they
received a US (unit separator) control character, they would activate
an SCR crowbar circuit across their power supply output, and would
trip their circuit breaker... a nice "remote shutoff feature".
These two design misfeatures, in combination, added up to real trouble.
A programmer would be sitting at the terminal, editing a file, and would
ask the editor to type out a range of lines. Partway through the
listing, the programmer would see the lines that s/he had wanted to
view, and would hit "break" to stop the listing. The terminal would
miss several characters while sending the "break", would turn its
receiver back on at the wrong moment in the middle of the "Break! Hit C
to continue" message from the editor, "believe" that it had received a
unit-separator character, and would crowbar its power supply. SNAP!
The terminal powers itself off, disconnecting the timesharing session
and discarding any changes that the user had entered and had not yet saved.
Needless to say, this problem led to the common believe that the ROSY
was unsuited for any use other than as a boat anchor.
--
Dave Platt FIDONET: Dave Platt on 1:204/444 VOICE: (415) 493-8805
UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com
INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@sun.com, ...@uunet.uu.net
USNAIL: Coherent Thought Inc. 3350 West Bayshore #205 Palo Alto CA 94303seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan) (02/07/89)
In article <25143@apple.Apple.COM> baum@apple.UUCP (Allen Baum) writes: >Of course, IBM was not the only culprit. A friend who once worked for Burroughs >told me that in order to sell a reduced-cost version of one machine, they had >to add a whole board of logic to produce delayed versions and phases of clocks >just to slow the (original) fast machine down. Since it was slower, they could >sellit for less! Add CDC to the list. One of the 170 models (forget which one) had, as the field service upgrade, the removal of a wire, or replacement with a shorter one. Some university figured this out, and told anyone who cared to listen all about it (although it voided the warantee [contract, actually], of course). Later, the 180 states, with reloadable microcode, did what everyone else does. Little surprise that CDC won't tell us what the microcode is, is it? -- Sean Eric Fagan | "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, seanf@sco.UUCP | the master calls a butterfly." -- Richard Bach (408) 458-1422 | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.
eal@tut.fi (Lehtim{ki Erkki) (02/07/89)
Our company bought a text processing package and a salesman came to us to
install it. He had some difficulties in first time to install it, so he
decided to delete all his files and start over. But alas, instead of
typing DELETE [...]*.*.* (Yes, it's in VAX/VBMS), he typed
DELETE/NOLOG [*...]*.*.*
Few moments later i noticed that i had much more disk quota left than i
should have and noticed that all my files with DELETE privilege for same
user group had gone. And for everybody else too.
It was lucky that the salesman was not using system account.
--
Erkki A. Lehtim{ki eal@tut.uucp "I don't eat nutrasweet"hollen@spot.megatek.uucp (Dion Hollenbeck) (02/07/89)
While a student at UCSD in the middle 60's I had the opportunity to
work many late nights in the computer punch card room on my physical
chemistry lab calculations. One late night when the computer operator
was obviously bored, he invited me into the sanctum sanctorum - the
computer room. The computer was a CDC 3600 and had a curving CONSOLE
about 8 feet long with several hundred lights and switches (in those
days, there was no such thing as terminal input). On the far wall was
a bank of a dozen 1/2" tape drives with vacuum column tape tension
control. He loaded up a deck into the card reader (the only command
input device) and started it. For the next 1/2 hour the computer
PLAYED the Stars and Stripes Forever and assorted Sousa marches,
using the tones on the CONSOLE (every light had its own tone) for
the high low notes and the tape drives for the low notes. At the
same time, all the lights on the CONSOLE were blinking on and off.
Since I am now a full-time programmer, I finally appreciate the work
it must have taken a system level programmer to do that. Talk about
primitive audio devices!
Dion Hollenbeck (619) 455-5590 x2814
Megatek Corporation, 9645 Scranton Road, San Diego, CA 92121
seismo!s3sun!megatek!hollen
ames!scubed/jacka@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Jack C. Armstrong) (02/07/89)
Some years ago, I was in a partnership which wrote and sold a word processing system. Being a company of two, we traded off making installation and training trips. I thought I had managed to get rid of my normal techno-speak when talking to office personnel, but after one lecture, a secretary came up and asked to see one of the 'disk files' I had talked about. I took her into the machine room and pointed out a drive, at which point she looked very surprised as said "Oh, I though you mean a round one of these" as she held up an emery board nail file.
jkl@csli.STANFORD.EDU (John Kallen) (02/07/89)
In article <1000@taux01.UUCP> taux01!cyosta@nsc.UUCP ( Yossie Silverman ) writes: >1) Back when core memory was in use one could "listen" to the memory with a > transistor radio. A game amung system programmers was to access memory > in such a manner as to produce recognizeble tunes on the radio. I recall being shown a PDP-8 in Uppsala University two years ago. It had a program that would perform memory accesses so as to generate noise that could be picked up by an AM radio. I was most amazed to hear a *polyhonic* version of "The Entertainer" come from a PDP-8 :-) John. _______________________________________________________________________________ | | | | |\ | | /|\ | John Kallen "The light works. The gravity | |\ \|/ \| * |/ | |/| | | PoBox 11215 works. Anything else we must | |\ /|\ |\ * |\ | | | | Stanford CA 94309 take our chances with." _|_|___|___|____|_\|___|__|__|_jkl@csli.stanford.edu___________________________
hinojosa@hp-sdd.hp.com (Daniel Hinojosa) (02/07/89)
In article <1000@taux01.UUCP> taux01!cyosta@nsc.UUCP ( Yossie Silverman ) writes: >2) Printers produce a buzzing with varying frequency depending on the text > being printed (this is because of the rate at which the hammers strike the > slugs in the print chain). The same system programmers would also compete > to see who could print a job that played specific (and known) tunes. > A friend of mine told a story of one of these printers he and another friend destroyed in a most interesting manner. These printers had, it would seem, a sort of chain that held all of the characters. I guess they held about three complete sets of the alphabet plus special characters. These chaps read the chain and created a file in their system that had all of the characters of one pass in it. They gave the command to print the file. Upon doing so the printer starts to spin the chain, then SMACK! Trying to print all of those characters at once while the chain was moving, didn't quite work. The fellow said they found the print characters in various parts of their office for years therafter. =================================================================== email - uunet!ucsd!hp-sdd!hinojosa | uunet!hplabs!hp-sdd!hinojosa ------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesus saves..but Gretzky gets the rebound!, He shoots, HE SCOOORES!!!
awm@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk (Aled Morris) (02/07/89)
>Is it true that the phone company designed touch-tone keyboards upside- >down from calcutaor, etc numeric keypads because data entry people could >punch faster than the first generation switching systems could read? Sounds like the excuse for the existence of the QWERTY layout keyboard (that is, to make it difficult to use so the mechanics of those early typerwriters wouldn't jam so often). Talking of computers which can be upgraded by removing boards and the like, have you ever met the Casio "fx" range of calculators. All of them _must_ have the same chipset inside, since irrespective of their model number, and the engravings on the key caps, they are all capable of the scientific functions from the top-of-the-range version. All you need to do is close your eyes and pretend that you're using a 550, and all the stats functions, radians mode etc. etc. are there! (the above may be an over-generalisation, I only ever met three or four calculators from the range, but they all exhibited this feature) Aled Morris systems programmer mail: awm@doc.ic.ac.uk | Department of Computing uucp: ..!ukc!icdoc!awm | Imperial College talk: 01-589-5111x5085 | 180 Queens Gate, London SW7 2BZ
aem@ibiza.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) (02/07/89)
In <2986@ficc.uu.net>, <peter@ficc.uu.net> wrote: >The Compucolor-II computer (a 4K Z80 based system) from Intecolor was ^^^^^^^^^ wasn't it Intercolor? >deliberately brain-damaged to keep it from competing with their low-end >color terminals. It was possible to make the machine smoke from a simple >BASIC program: > FOR I=0 TO 255: OUT 6,I: NEXT >Apparently the CPU had some control over the power supply. You had to pull >the plug to keep it from smoking... just flipping off DC power wasn't >enough. That reminds me about the Commodore PET, you know, the one with the terrible keyboard. If you 'poke'd to a certain location, you destroyed the boot eprom, and you would have to take the machine in for service. aem a.e.mossberg aem@mthvax.miami.edu MIAVAX::AEM (Span) aem@umiami.BITNET (soon) Were there no women, men might live like gods. - Thomas Dekker
aem@ibiza.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) (02/07/89)
When I was working for a programming company, we had a number of accounts that had Xerox (I think?) word processors. I was told that some of these models were designed so that if you opened the case (voids the warrenty) they would erase the eproms and you'd be forced to make a service call... aem a.e.mossberg aem@mthvax.miami.edu MIAVAX::AEM (Span) aem@umiami.BITNET (soon) Were there no women, men might live like gods. - Thomas Dekker
alanr@mntgfx.mentor.com (Alan Rosenfeld) (02/07/89)
At school (too many years ago) we had a PDP-10 system that exhibited an addressing problem if and only if the humidity of the room dropped below a certain threshold. The fancy computer room style air conditioner- humidifier-dehumidifier wasn't good enough to control the room's humidity. The standard fix for the problem was to get out the mops and buckets and mop the machine room floor with plain water. We had the cleanest floors !!! -- Alan Rosenfeld (aka Rosy) alanr@mentor.COM ...!tektronix!sequent!mntgfx!alanr
johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine) (02/07/89)
In article <1000@taux01.UUCP> taux01!cyosta@nsc.UUCP ( Yossie Silverman ) writes: >I have two stories to relate. Both have to do with IBM machines (the large >veriaty): > >1) Back when core memory was in use one could "listen" to the memory with a > transistor radio. ... Aw shucks, we did this with a PDP-8. The accumulator was displayed in fairly large incandescent bulbs on the front panel, which needed high powered drivers. Turning the bits on and off made plenty of radio noise. I've heard legends of PDP-9 programmers who would routinely leave a radio on the console as a debugging aid. >2) Printers produce a buzzing with varying frequency depending on the text > being printed (this is because of the rate at which the hammers strike the > slugs in the print chain). ... There was a legendary card deck that, when run through an old electromechanical accounting machine, would print out an American flag while playing the Star Spangled Banner. Speaking of printers, here are two silly stories from about 1969. At that time they used 360/20s as RJE terminals to the 360/91 mainframe. The '91 crashed all the time, so while waiting for the '91 to come back up we would toggle in little programs from the console, or labriously punch an up to 80 byte program on a card, then use the "load" button to read and start the program. There was constant competition for the most interesting single-card program. My best was an expensive mimeo machine that read in a deck of cards and listed it over and over. In one case, we experimented with the Universal Character Set buffer in the printer. The 1403 printer had interchangable print trains, but different trains would have different character layouts. The UCS buffer told what character was at what position on the train. When it printed a line, it would see what characters were at the right position, fire the appropriate hammers, move the train ahead one position, fire the appropriate hammers, and so on until the entire line was printed. So as an experiment, we filled the entire UCS buffer with the same character, then printed lines of that character. It printed about a page and a half real fast, then the cover opened about half way (it automatically opened whenever the printer ran out of paper, to warn the operator and dump ever-present coffee cups on the floor) and then blew a fuse. We cleared out. It hadn't occurred to us we could blow fuses with software. In another case, we experimented with the carriage control tape. Things like "skip to new page" or "vertical tab" were implemented with a loop of paper tape that had 66 rows, one for each line on a page, and 12 columns. You could do a skip to channel 1, and it would advance the paper and the tape until it found a hole in column 1. By convention, column 1 was top of page, column 2 top and middle of page, but you could program it any way you want. We tried various combinations and everything worked just fine until we tried a skip to channel 12. Unfortunately, there weren't any punches in column 12, so the paper just whizzed through the printer at full speed. We pushed the printer stop button. Nothing. We pushed the CPU stop button. Still nothing. Finally the CPU System Reset button stopped the printer. Being good ecologists, we fed the paper back into the feed box, then ran. -- John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869 { bbn | spdcc | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something You're never too old to have a happy childhood.
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/07/89)
In article <3292@ima.ima.isc.com> johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) writes: > >In another case, we experimented with the carriage control tape... We tried >various combinations and everything worked just fine until we tried a skip to >channel 12. Unfortunately, there weren't any punches in column 12, so the >paper just whizzed through the printer at full speed. Some other manufacturers were a little more perspicuous, or maybe they had real-world experience with less-reliable carriage control tape readers. The Burroughs printers (mid 60s vintage) had a timer that would stop feeding paper after a few seconds of spewing. haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) (02/08/89)
This isn't directly about computers, but... My father was a Mecanical Engineer for RCA's old tube plant in Harrison, NJ. When they laid him off (he simultaneously got a letter from David Sarnoff, congratulating him on the patent for a new process he had come up with, with the layoff notice) he ended up with a small company called National Berellyia (sp?) Corporation. They transfered him from NNJ to their plant outside of Doylestown, PA, where he was set to designing a new IC package to compete with the (then relatively new) DIP package. He performed fabulously, meeting all of the specs set down to him by his boss. They presented it to the client, who said: "I love it, it's beautiful, but -- that's not what I wanted, and I can't use it!" Another design of his was taken to a trade show, given a host of orders...and then the plant gave one delay after another after another... Smell a rat? So did the SEC. When they walked in and took over, they discovered nice little cost overruns -- like the $1000 in gold bathroom fixtures charged (by the company president) to Dad's accounts! The company president fled to Switzerland with $2 million of embezzeled cash, the plant was shut down, and now my Dad runs an Iron Works. Anyone need any railings?
adams@hpfelg.HP.COM (John Adams) (02/08/89)
>1) Back when core memory was in use one could "listen" to the memory with a > transistor radio. A game amung system programmers was to access memory > in such a manner as to produce recognizeble tunes on the radio. When I first learned programming in high school, our math department had a HP-2114B 8k machine which booted ala the front panel. One of the local guru's programmed the computer to play Bach and other classical tunes on a AM radio. The program became so popular, a radio became a permanent hardware addition! This same person also found that by switching on and off the 2748B's motor, he was able to 'play' the same songs on the tape reader. I began to experiment with writing computer games which would produce sound effects. One game, star trek, would produce phaser, photon torpedo, and red alert signals on the radio.
dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (02/08/89)
There's another great story involving computers-that-have-lights. This
one involves Ivan Sutherland, co-founder of Evans & Sutherland (the
pioneering computer-graphics firm), developer of Sketchpad (the very
first computer-graphics tablet device, I believe), and winner of the
"Father of Computer Graphics" aware some years ago.
While in college, Sutherland worked with one of the very earliest Von
Neumann architecture (stored-program) computers... I've heard this
specific machine referred to as "THE Von Neumann machine". This
computer had a very limited amount of memory storage. Rather than using
ferrite cores, RAM memory, or such modern devices, it used "storage
tubes"... tiny little CRTs similar in operation to the tubes used in
some "storage screen" graphics terminals (anybody used a Tektronix 4010
lately)? These little devices would store a rectangular array of bits
in each tube. It was actually possible to SEE the bits by looking at
the phosphor-coated target area in each screen.
One of the disadvantages of this storage technology (aside from low
capacity) is that the tubes have a limited lifetime. "Burn-in"
eventually occurs (as owners of Tektronix storage scopes can attest) as
the phosphor structure ages and breaks down, and eventually the tubes
must be replaced.
The engineers who maintained this computer had some special-purpose
diagnostic programs, which would run "ripple patterns" through memory
and would look for bit-patterns that weren't stored properly (a similar
test is done when diagnosing memory problems in most computers). With
the Von Neumann machine, though, it was often possible to identify tubes
that were on the way downhill, simply by looking at the array of tubes
in the cabinet and seeing which ones had a dim or uneven appearance
during the ripple test.
One day, Sutherland [and a cohort, I believe] substituted a program deck
of their own devising for the memory-test deck that the engineers used.
This substitute deck did not run the usual memory test; instead, it
loaded a certain specific bit-pattern into memory and then halted the
machine.
During the next routine-maintenance period, the engineer reset the
machine, booted the deck, and the program immediately halted. Puzzled,
the engineer reset and rebooted again, and the same thing occurred.
Suspecting that some portion of memory had failed so completely that the
program could not run, the engineer opened the panel to the storage-tube
rack.
There, shining out at him in carefully-lit bits, was a four-letter word.
A sign soon appeared in the computer room... "Programmers will NOT mess
around with the hardware-diagnostic program decks!"
[Disclaimers: it has been 15 years since I heard this story, so I've
probably forgotten some of the details and have gotten others wrong.]
--
Dave Platt FIDONET: Dave Platt on 1:204/444 VOICE: (415) 493-8805
UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com
INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@sun.com, ...@uunet.uu.net
USNAIL: Coherent Thought Inc. 3350 West Bayshore #205 Palo Alto CA 94303lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden) (02/08/89)
I dont know if anyone else has repeated this one or not. I was at a DECUS conference about 6 yrs ago when a system programmer was laughing about programming a Dec machine to seek around on a disk drive enough to cause the cabinet to rock. Apparently this became some sort of a game, so that they actually wrote programs to make the drive cabinet walk around the room to particular locations... -- Larry W. Virden 674 Falls Place, Reynoldsburg, OH 43068 (614) 864-8817 75046,606 (CIS) ; LVirden (ALPE) ; osu-cis!n8emr!lwv (UUCP) osu-cis!n8emr!lwv@TUT.CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (INTERNET) The world's not inherited from our parents, but borrowed from our children.
dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Dennis L. Mumaugh) (02/08/89)
The headline would be UNIX crashes IBM system.
It seems that we had obtained an UNIX system and was using it for
the first time. In those days UNIX was brand new and the rest of
the world had never heard of it.
Any rate, we had attached our PDP-11/45 to an IBM 370-155 system
running JESS-2. This meant the PDP-11 pretended to be a RJE
card-reader/printer/punch station. Things were going quite well
and the Bell Labs software worked great.
Then one day we found that our rje line was disconnected and the
IBM people refused to allow us to talk with the IBM machines.
The reason, they claimed, was that most of the time that UNIX
submitted an RJE job the IBM would promptly crash with no error
report.
Finally it was determined that when the IBM people had sysgen'd
the line they claimed it was a 2780 with a 80 character line and
we were a 2770 with a 132 character line. This didn't cause
problems unless our line and the next adjacent line both
sumbitted jobs at once.
But I thought it amusing that DEC equipment could crash an IBM
system at will.
--
=Dennis L. Mumaugh
Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.comcosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (02/08/89)
Somehow, the computer folklore question dribbled through the RISKs list. I've forgotten now who asked for this stuff in the first place, but... /Bernie\ Date: Sat, 28 Jan 89 0:22:59 EST From: Bernie Cosell <cosell@WILMA.BBN.COM> Subject: Re: ELIZA and Joe Weizenbaum } > Or, there's the story about the guy who falls asleep in front of his } > terminal with an ELIZA program running and his boss logs on and thinks he's } > talking to him but is actually talking to the program, and gets pissed off. } } This may have actually happened. Joseph Weizenbaum (MIT professor, author of } _Computer Power and Human Reason_) told the anecdote in a class, with himself } as one of the actors. It went something like this -- some of this is } doubtless my own memory inventing things. The dialogue is partially courtesy } of GNU Emacs' Eliza program, and the rest is made up. } } .... anecdote follows... Is that for real, that Joe is telling that story? He has a lot of anecdotes, many of which appear in CP&HR, but I didn't know he was including one like that these days (alhtough such a thing must have SURELY happened some time or other at MIT). The REAL first round of that anecdote dates publicly to a small bit Danny Bobrow wrote in the first issue of some AI journal he started in something like 1968. The thing DID happen, although not quite as the word-of-mouth has transmitted it down to the present generation. The program in question was _DOCTOR_, **NOT** Eliza, and it happened at BBN, not at MIT. I know all of this, because (Ta DAAH!) **I** wrote the original Doctor! Not _Eliza_ --- _doctor_: Weizenbaum's CACM article on Eliza had just appeared and for a variety of reasons I was looking for a neat Lisp hack to play with. The CACM article mostly told me enough, and I went off and wrote the thing. I can supply the details of the *real* "A Turing Test Passed" incident (the title of Danny Bobrow's article describing the event: it involved my version of doctor that I had left running for people to play with to help me get it debugged, the "innocent third party" -- Danny Bobrow, and the Turing Testee, a random executive (whose name I will not reveal) who thought (for reasons that it is hard to figure out) that the Mod-33 was connected through to Danny at home early on a Saturday morning. I can supply more details if anyone really cares, including (if I can dig the thing out of my archives) a copy of Bobrow's article about the incident which included the *real* typescript (danny came in later that Saturday morning and ripped it off of the terminal). Bernie Cosell, BBN Sys & Tech, Cambridge, MA 02238 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Jan 89 02:26 EST From: KROVETZ@cs.umass.EDU Subject: ELIZA and Joe Weizenbaum Bloom's story about Weizenbaum and ELIZA is close, but the person involved was Daniel Bobrow, not Weizenbaum. The account was described in the December 1968 issue of the SIGART Newsletter, and was reprinted in the book Machines Who Think, by Pamela McCorduck (p. 225). The following is the description of the account: "One Saturday morning about 9 A.M., a BBN Vice-President in charge of selling our Telcomp commercial service arrived at our PDP-1 computer room hoping to be able to use the computer for a demonstration. He found a note on the PDP-1 teletype that read: `TYPE ALL MESSAGES INTO THIS TELETYPE, AND END THEM WITH A PERIOD'. This note was left there by one of the programming bums who had just succeeded in making run a Lisp version of the DOCTOR program (based on ELIZA as developed by Weizenbaum). However, the VP thought that this note indicated that this teletype was linked with the one in my [Bobrow's] home, since I often used the computer all night. Therefore, he started typing to `me', but in fact was typing to this version of the DOCTOR program. The following conversation ensued: VP: Do you think that I can use the computer this morning? TELETYPE: Why do you ask? VP: I might be able to make some additional telcomp sales. TELETYPE: Why aren't you sure? VP: My prospective customers have never seen a demonstration of the system. TELETYPE: Does this mean very much to you? VP: Of course it does. TELETYPE: You seem very positive of that. VP: This is ridiculous. TELETYPE: What do you mean this is ridiculous? VP: Is there any reason why I can't use the computer now? TELETYPE: Tell me more about your prospective customers. VP: Please dial me up on 491-1850 Note that after that remark the VP did not obey instructions and left out the period. Therefore, of course, the computer didn't answer him. This so infuriated the VP, who thought I was playing games with him, that he called me up, woke me from a deep sleep, and said: VP: Why are you being so snotty with me? BOBROW: What do you mean why am I being snotty to you? The VP angrily read the dialog that `we' had been having, and couldn't get any response but laughter from me. It took me a while to convince him it really was the computer". Bob Krovetz krovetz@cs.umass.edu or krovetz@umass.bitnet
peggy@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Peggy Shambo) (02/08/89)
In article <1742@hp-sdd.hp.com> hinojosa@hp-sdd.hp.com.UUCP (Daniel Hinojosa) writes: >These chaps read the chain and created a file in their system that >had all of the characters of one pass in it. They gave the command to >print the file. Upon doing so the printer starts to spin the chain, >then SMACK! Trying to print all of those characters at once while the >chain was moving, didn't quite work. The fellow said they found >the print characters in various parts of their office for years >therafter. Gee.. I used to be a computer operator (HISI) and we had a regular print test program that printed all the characters.. in a stepped version like this: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890!@#$%^&*() abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890!@#$%^&*() ) abcdefghikjlmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890!@#$%^&*() etc Anyway, we never snapped a print chain on those. And we did a print test each shift, and those printers were working 24 hours a day (literally!) I think the above mentioned print chain was just ready to go anyway. -- _____________________________________________________________________________ Peg Shambo | Sophisticated Lady, I know. | Ellington/ peggy@ddsw1.mcs.com | You miss the Love you had long ago | Mills/Parish | And when nobody is nigh, you cry. |
cetron@wasatch.UUCP (Edward J Cetron) (02/08/89)
In article <799@n8emr.UUCP> lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden) writes: > >I dont know if anyone else has repeated this one or not. I was at a DECUS >conference about 6 yrs ago when a system programmer was laughing about >programming a Dec machine to seek around on a disk drive enough to cause the >cabinet to rock. Apparently this became some sort of a game, so that they >actually wrote programs to make the drive cabinet walk around the room to >particular locations... Well, the DECUS part is right, the rest of the story sounds right, so I guess this was me....but Larry, you left out WHY we made the RP's wander! Seems I was a young hotshot programmer-type and was working in the corporate research unit of a big company (lets see, it makes LOTS of bandaids). Well, it was the first time I ever used a machine with a disk drive in a room that I could find (much less have permission to enter). Never having had a computer with version numbers before (this was RSX-11M 3.0 - dating myself huh?) I never purged my directory. Also given that I was hacking an immense Data-entry and retrieval system in Fortran-IV (more dating (-: ), TKB would do intense things to the drive, which was fragmented beyond belief. This tended to upset the system manager, one Mark Googleman, no end, since he'd have to move the beast back into position. Since two hackers on one machine naturally tend to competition (could you crack into the machine, get priv'ed, and log the other off BEFORE they noticed and logged you off?) and I was embarassed when confronted with the proof that this was my fault, I naturally bluffed my way out explaining that I was doing on purpose. Well, one thing led to another, and it became a ritual to leave taped papers to the floor with one's name on it in the computer room. The object was to spend as much time from 9:00pm until 7:00am WITHOUT ENTERING THE COMPUTER ROOM, running programs, doing TKB's etc, in order to move the RP's in a fixed manner. In the morning, the person with the disk drive closest to their name won the pool of money. I had slowly become the 'hardware champion' until one day Mark managed to program the tape drive for christmas carols...sigh, I was so devastated that I didn't even take up his challenge to make the RP's perform accompaniment...... -ed cetron (but no list of computer folklore can be complete without the "always mount a scratch monkey" story... The originator was/is on the net somewhere.....)
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/08/89)
Time for some DEC stories.
A lot of the PDP11s had optional floating point hardware. The assembler
program had an option flag so that it could either assemble floating
point instructions or assemble calls to a library of software routines
simulating the floating point hardware. Well, once upon a time they
released a set of diagnostics for the floating point hardware that had
been accidentally assembled using the software simulation flag, so they
didn't exercise the hardware at all...
We had a system start crashing frequently, trashing the system disk in
the process. After a lot of very painful examination by hand of disk
contents we concluded that it was occasionally missing a word
transfer, or doing an extra one, depending on the direction of transfer.
This we traced to a bad Unibus receiver chip that was allowing a glitch
to get through as a legitimate pulse. The annoying thing was that the
disk diagnostic program never detected the problem, because it wrote
and read back a block of identical words, and didn't clear the read
buffer between reads. When every word looks like every other you don't
notice the missing or extra ones.
Another G.E. story: nothing wrong here, just an interesting consideration.
In MULTICS the customers wanted the calendar time kept in something like
microseconds since midnight, January 1, 1901. We had a whole rack of
equipment just for this clock, which used something like a 72-bit
register. Some of the most significant bits of the clock wouldn't
change for years after it was built; so we had to have logic that
would copy the value to another register, flip all the bits, verify
that they flipped, then flip them all back and verify that they all
flipped back.
I had occasion to look at the date routines in an early version of the
operating system for the Burroughs 6500. Not only did it take care of
leap years every four years; it correctly handled the exceptions for
centuries and millenia. If you're going to write software that is
correct, you might as well write it to be correct for the next few
thousand years. I guess you don't worry about the extra computation if
it's only executed once a day.
haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu
haynes@ucscc.bitnet
..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes
"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chroniclewerme@Alliant.COM (Ric Werme) (02/08/89)
In article <3292@ima.ima.isc.com> johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) writes: >In another case, we experimented with the carriage control tape. Things like >"skip to new page" or "vertical tab" were implemented with a loop of paper >tape that had 66 rows, one for each line on a page, and 12 columns. At Carnegie -Mellon, the standard carriage tape had an empty channel. An easy way to get on the bad side of the operators was to use the right character as a fortran print control character. (The tape was designed so that the printer implemented nearly all of the fortran carriage control features.) It was never a problem until someone wrote a SNOBOL program and forgot to print a space at the beginning of each line. The operator wasn't ear the machine at the time and 1403 fed the paper faster than it could stack!> >There was a legendary card deck that, when run through an old electromechanical >accounting machine, would print out an American flag while playing the >Star Spangled Banner. I hearby claim the best sound of any printer music. At Sanders Technology, a defunct company that pioneered the letter quality dot matrix printer, I decided to come up with some real music. After a disappointing start, I designed some fonts that were variable numbers of vertical bars in 1/2 inch wide characters. The printer's horizontal resolution was 0.001", better than laser printers, but not good enough for decent music. I had to compute line spacings in 0.0001" units and round to the nearest 0.001". About an octave and a half would fit in a 2Kb PROM (this was before 16K ram chips made down- loaded fonts practical). Next I arranged "A Bicycle Built for Two", since that was the first song a computer ever played (you've heard it in the movie 2001). It also was a hack on Daisywheel terminals, our main competition. It was impressive. And attracted a fair amount of attention at the trade shows. I later did three Christmas carols, and even a version of Le Marseilles (sp?) for a potential French customer. Since the only real language we had was Fortran, I wrote TECO programs to generate the font from a source file of frequency and character bindings, and another TECO program that read a simple music language and generated the lines of text needed to play the song. Not only could I set the meter, the program had to reverse the order of the characters for the right-left passes. I still have two of those printers. NH Mensa prints its newsletters on one. Unfortunately, I'm running out of ribbons and the pins are beginning to crack. Smart printer. Does its own justification, handles proportional fonts, mixed fonts, all sorts of stuff. Its control language is readable, inspired by runoff. Between the printer, a CP/M system and a screen editor (written as a macro for a TECO variant), who needs an IBM PC? -- | A pride of lions | Eric J Werme | | A gaggle of geese | uucp: decvax!linus!alliant | | An odd lot of programmers | Phone: 603-673-3993 |
greenber@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Brian Greenberg) (02/08/89)
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal this past summer that told
of executives who were finally learning how to use/misuse their office
computers. Two stories that I found particularly funny follow:
1. One executive was reading directions on how to boot his machine with
a floppy disk. The directions said to remove the disk from it's
protective sleeve and place it in the disk drive. He was having trouble,
and when the serviceman showed up, he found that the executive had
removed the actual disk from the square plastic that it comes in. No
wonder the machine wouldn't boot!
2. Another executive read that he should hit the Enter key, "the one with
the elbow printed on it." He was seen later that day attempting to
hit the enter key with his elbow.
________________________________________________________________
___ _____
/ \ greenber@eniac.seas.upenn.edu /
/ ) (
/---- ___ o ___ ___ | ___
/ ) / ( / ( \ ( | \ )
/____)__/ \__/ \__/ \__)\__/| (__/ \_____/ o
"Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true" - B. Joel
________________________________________________________________ath@helios.prosys.se (Anders Thulin) (02/08/89)
In article <7449@csli.STANFORD.EDU> jkl@csli.UUCP (John Kallen) writes: >In article <1000@taux01.UUCP> taux01!cyosta@nsc.UUCP ( Yossie Silverman ) writes: >> [... listening on core memory through radio...] > >I recall being shown a PDP-8 in Uppsala University two years ago. It >had a program that would perform memory accesses so as to generate >noise that could be picked up by an AM radio. I was most amazed to >hear a *polyhonic* version of "The Entertainer" come from a PDP-8 :-) > The DataSAAB D21 computer (RIP) had a loudspeaker attached to one of the bits in its `multiplicator register'. This gadget made it possible to play tunes by writing suitable programs. One such program I remember played a tune through the loudspeaker while 'stomping' with the Potter 1" tape stations. It was also possible to hear on the 'tune' if a compilation succeeded or not. Just prior to printing out error messages on the line printer the compiler used to make a sound slightly like a raspberry - that was a sure sign that there were errors in the code. -- Anders Thulin INET : ath@prosys.se ProgramSystem AB UUCP : ...!{uunet,mcvax}!enea!prosys!ath Teknikringen 2A PHONE: +46 (0)13 21 40 40 S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden FAX : +46 (0)13 21 36 35
amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir) (02/08/89)
In article <1101@rlgvax.UUCP> smadi@rlgvax.UUCP (On Paradise) writes: |I have not witnessed this one, but some of my friends did. I did, so here's a small :-) correction: |Some computer-illiterate visitors were shown the CDC6400 at the Hebrew |University of Jerusalem. One of them asked how does the machine do all |these wonderful things; their guide joked that it has a small man |inside. | |While he was speaking, a CDC technician (the late Rachmim Moreno, a |small man indeed) has just finished some routine maintenance and |stepped out of the machine. It was not a CDC6400, but a PDP 11/45 (long cabinet). Anybody could walk into the CDC... -- Amos Shapir amos@nsc.com National Semiconductor (Israel) P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel Tel. +972 52 522261 TWX: 33691, fax: +972-52-558322 34 48 E / 32 10 N (My other cpu is a NS32532)
tp@granite.dec.com (t patterson) (02/09/89)
in the computer folklore vein... >From: cetron@wasatch.UUCP (Edward J Cetron) >-ed cetron > >(but no list of computer folklore can be complete without the "always mount >a scratch monkey" story... The originator was/is on the net somewhere.....) I looked in the ol' archives, and, sure enough, I'd saved the "always mount a scratch monkey" story: :Path: topaz!ll-xn!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!decwrl!postpischil@being.dec.com :>From: postpischil@being.dec.com (Always mount a scratch monkey.) :Newsgroups: net.jokes :Subject: Rape, a bathroom, and a monkey :Date: 21 Aug 86 15:35:45 GMT :Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation :Lines: 109 : :... : -- edp : Eric Postpischil : "Always mount a scratch monkey." :... : : :Next, we have the Scratch Monkey story. : : Seems one day Bud was sitting at his desk when the phone rang. : : Bud: Hello. : Voice: YOU KILLED MABEL!! : B: Excuse me? : V: YOU KILLED MABEL!! : : This went on for a couple of minutes and Bud was getting nowhere, : so he decided to alter his approach to the customer. : : B: HOW DID I KILL MABEL? : V: YOU PM'ED MY MACHINE!! : : Well to avoid making a long story even longer, I will abbreviate : what had happened. The customer was a biologist at a university : and he had a PDP12 that controlled gas mixtures that Mabel : (the monkey) breathed. Now Mabel was not your ordinary monkey. : The University had spent years teaching Mabel to swim and they were : studying the effects that different gas mixtures had on her physiology. : It turns out that the Field Service Branch had just gotten a new : Calibrated Power Supply (used to calibrate Analog equipment) and : at their first opportunity, decided to calibrate the D/A converters : in the PDP12. This changed some of the gas mixtures and poor Mabel : was asphyxiated. Well, Bud then called the Branch Manager of the : Field Service branch: : : Manager: Hello : B: This is Bud DeFore, I heard you did a PM at the University : of Blah-de-blah. : M: Yes, we really performed a complete PM. What can I : do for You? : B: Can You Swim? : :The moral is, of course, always mount a scratch monkey. Just after I first heard this, I was visiting a professor at Washington University School of Medicine who'd been having problems with some of his PDP-11's. I noticed a little metal contraption with lots of little straps on it. I was informed that they'd would strap a monkey to it so they could experiment with visual perceptions stuff, like how well a monkey could track a moving object with its eyes while its brain was being "stimulated" (a euphemism for "receiving electric shocks"). It seems that one day they'd left the monkey strapped in just before somebody came in to run diagnostics on the '11 controlling the lab instruments ... they ended up with one very fried monkey. (apparently this was only one in a long series of horror stories about "those dumb lab assistants who always screw up my experiments" so this is really "med school folklore") Our little conversation ended with: me: Well, that just goes to show you... professor: Yes? me: Always Mount a Scratch Monkey. -- t. patterson domain: tp@decwrl.dec.com path: decwrl!tp icbm: 122 9 41 W / 37 26 35 N % opinions herein are mine alone and certainly not those of DEC
siegel@utgard.cs.cornell.edu (Alexander Siegel) (02/09/89)
I was once watching a technician change a PDP-11/?? from a 110 volt line to a 220 volt line. This machine had an emergeny power cutoff which used a big relay. He did the change by putting a big tranformer in the power line to step down the voltage. Unfortunately, he put the cutoff relay on the wrong side of the transformer. When he turned it on, it hummed along nicely and started to boot. I noticed that the power supply warning light had come on and pointed this out to him. The conversation went something like this: I said, "Hmmm... the power supply warning light is on." He said, "Uh, yeah. That's no problem." The machine continues to boot... I said, "Do you smell anything?" "Yeah. Smells a little like burnt popcorn." Seconds later black smoke started to come out of the back of the machine. He had turned the cutoff relay into 5 pounds of molten copper and plastic. Alex Siegel - CS graduate drudge at Cornell a.k.a. Scimitar; a.k.a. Phineas Ginn (SCA); a.k.a. Trash siegel@cs.cornell.edu (607)255-1165
shane@chablis.cc.umich.edu (Shane Looker) (02/09/89)
In article <1373@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> aem@Mthvax.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) writes: >That reminds me about the Commodore PET, you know, the one with the >terrible keyboard. If you 'poke'd to a certain location, you destroyed >the boot eprom, and you would have to take the machine in for service. That (in turn) reminds me of the early 6502 chips (used by the Commodore PET). Supposedly, some of the first series used in the PET had an actual HACF (Halt and Catch Fire) instruction. I've been told that one instruction would cause all the pins to fire at once, thus burning out the chip. Shane Looker | Looker@um.cc.umich.edu | shane@chablis.cc.umich.edu
BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Barbara Vaughan) (02/09/89)
In 1972, I was assigned the task of writing an interactive user interface for a statistical analysis program written in FORTRAN IV. I was told that the users were "MBA types; not very quantitative and with little background in statistics." ( I hope this is no longer true of MBA's.) Anyway, writing such an interface in FORTRAN IV was no picnic, but I tried to make it very friendly. Plain English questions, examples of correct answers, range checks to determine validity of responses, helpful error messages. One of the first users to test the program said that it kept bombing out on question 3. "Enter number of thingamabobs (Valid responses 1 to 5):". I asked what her response had been and she said "Five". Puzzled, I asked if I could watch her run the program. This is what I saw: ...(Valid responses 1 to 5): FIVE That's when I realized what nonquantitative really meant. Even though FORTRAN IV had no character string handling capability (You had to declare your characters as INTEGER or REAL), I had to write a routine to read all keyboard input as characters, convert to numbers, and add a friendly message to explain what a number was.
bga@raspail.UUCP (Bruce Albrecht) (02/09/89)
When Grinnell College upgraded from a PDP 11/45 to an 11/70, the DEC field engineer finished the installation and booted the 11/70. It started up, and 15 seconds later, it promptly died. He tried it again, and it failed again. He called up his superior, who thought about it for a few moments, asked him if he had removed the loopback plugs on all the serial interface boards. It seems that RSTS/E sends out a message informing the users that the system is on its way up, and when the message was sent, the loopback plug turned it into a user input, to which the system sent a message 'input ignored.', which also became user input ..., and the system died because it ran out of free buffers.
jbs@rti.UUCP (Joe Simpson) (02/09/89)
A friend of mine used to work for Northern Telecom, and said this story circulated there: A team of installers was installing a DMS-10 digital telephone switch somewhere in Tenessee. They had it set up and had been testing it all day; everything seemed to work okay, so they left early in the evening to go barhopping and rabble-rousing, as NT installers are said to be wont to do. Next morning they came in only to find that the switch had failed during the night, and a couple of circuit boards were fried to boot. They replaced the boards, tested it all day, and left again that evening. Next morning, same result. This went on for a couple of days, and finally one of the installers bunked down next to the DMS-10. Along about midnight, in came the cleaning lady with a feather duster, and proceeded to dust everythibg in the room, including the exposed circuit boards. UNRELATED STORY: When I was an undergrad at UNC, I spent a little time in the graduate department's graphics lab. When one of the grads was showing us the hardware, he pointed out a large rubber mallet sitting beside one of the cabinets. He said that the connection between the chips' prongs and their sockets sometimes became poor, and often when the system acted up the cure was to bang on the cabinet with the mallet to reseat the chips. He also said anytime they had a photo of the lab taken, they made sure the mallet was visible in the picture, and sent a copy to DEC, who apparently knew exactly what the mallet was for.
sue@beep.UUCP (Sue D. Nimh) (02/09/89)
In article <35619@bbn.COM>, mthome@bbn.com (Mike Thome) writes:
=> The only other good (& also true) microwave story I know is:
=> The Amazing Randi, in his Big Sting of the Psychic Researchers
=> Operation had two young unknown magicians pose as psychics to be
=> researched... one of the feats of mentalist powers they were asked to
=> demonstrate was "to do something" to a pair of digital watches. Well,
=> they stared and kneeded the watched without effect until lunch, when they
=> palmed 'em and nuked 'em for a minute on high. After lunch the
=> researchers were astounded!
What happened to the watches? Did they run faster from the magnetic
fields?
I found out something rather disturbing about microwave ovens a
couple of years ago. I had opened a bottle of Ocean Spray Juice and
without thinking about it, dropped the cap on top of our microwave
oven, a Sears model from approx 1970. The cap stood ON EDGE at about
a 60 degree angle from the surface. And to think that I thought
"This is a convenient place to set my tapes"!
[Un]fortunately, our new microwave does not show this behavior.
--
Sue D. Nimh
scooter!beep!sue
"I am not a crook!" -- Richard Nixondik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) (02/09/89)
In article <2226@scolex.sco.COM> seanf@scolex.UUCP (Sean Fagan) writes: > Add CDC to the list. Oh, sure. Their 205 is sold in three basic versions: 1 vector pipe, 2 vector pipes or 4 vector pipes. Only they do not produce machines with 1 vector pipe. So if a site buys a 205 with 1 vector pipe, he gets one with 2 plus a switch that is set to 1 pipe. Alas, when booting the system, it requires the mode to be set to 2 pipes... -- dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland INTERNET : dik@cwi.nl BITNET/EARN: dik@mcvax
dougf@dougf.Caltech.Edu (Doug Freyburger) (02/09/89)
In article <6255@saturn.ucsc.edu> haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) writes: > >I had occasion to look at the date routines in an early version of the >operating system for the Burroughs 6500. Not only did it take care of >leap years every four years; it correctly handled the exceptions for >centuries and millenia. If you're going to write software that is >correct, you might as well write it to be correct for the next few >thousand years. I guess you don't worry about the extra computation if >it's only executed once a day. >haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu My office-mate years ago at JPL lived through this: When the Viking Mars probes where launched, noone thought they'd last very long in Mars oribt, so the programs saved a few bytes by ignoring leap years and hardwiring 366 in (1976 was leap). The next year everyone was called in to rewrite their systems for downloading to Mars with a 365 day year. Better yet, both spacecraft were still going strong in 1980 and most of the crew were long gone to other projects. Everyone had to be called back for another download to Mars. It pays to include leap year into your code. From personal experience: I remember a Lunar-Lander game written in PDP-11 TECO that used VT100 cursor keys. The entire program looked like your terminal was at the wrong baud rate (standard TECO programming form). It ran without change on the old PDP-10 still surviving at college and later on the brand-new VAX as well as 3 different O/S versions of PDP-11 without change. From rumors of ancient DEC history: The system programmer group writing TOPS-10 used to love fancy TECO programs and had a weekly contest for them. One guru working on ForTran compilers would read them carefully but never enter one. They thought he was just concentrating on compilers. Then one week he submitted a macro that did ForTran compilation, complete with optimization. The TECO program took days to run, but it worked. Apparently he had written a PDP-10 instruction set emulator in TECO and feed the compiler to it! dougf@wega.caltech.edu Douglas J Freyburger Caltech 206-49 Pasadena, CA 91125 (818)356-2913
merlyn@intelob.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz @ Stonehenge) (02/09/89)
Back in the early days, I was using an ADM-3 from a friend's house (hi
Greg Jorgenson!) with an old acoustical-coupled modem. The modem was
attached used on the house phone... a party line (!). We were
accustomed to getting bumped with funny little noise characters when
the party-liners would try to pickup the phone for a call, but
otherwise tied up the line for the usual hours-on-end we hackers are
known for.
One day, we picked up the phone to make a call, and found that the
party-liners were on it (two female voices). Since we had nothing
better to do, we decided to listen in. The conversation went
something like:
Voice 1: Did you just hear that?
Voice 2: Yeah, it was a click. Must be our party line.
Voice 1: A party line? Does that mean they are listening to us?
Voice 2: I don't think they can. All I can hear when they are talking
is some beeps.
We scrambled to hang up the phone to cover our instant hysterical
laughter. Little did they know... :-)
--
Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
on contract to BiiN (for now :-), Hillsboro, Oregon, USA.
ARPA: <@iwarp.intel.com:merlyn@intelob.intel.com> (fastest!)
MX-Internet: <merlyn@intelob.intel.com> UUCP: ...[!uunet]!tektronix!biin!merlyn
Standard disclaimer: I *am* my employer!
Cute quote: "Welcome to Oregon... home of the California Raisins!"lvc@cbnews.ATT.COM (Lawrence V. Cipriani) (02/09/89)
In article <AWM.89Feb6212935@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk> awm@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk (Aled Morris) writes: >Is it true that the phone company designed touch-tone keyboards upside- >down from calcutaor, etc numeric keypads because data entry people could >punch faster than the first generation switching systems could read? No. The first generation switching systems were invented *long before* touch-tone phones were even imagined. A mortician invented the first switching system, an electromechanical system called step-by-step. He invented it because the operator in the town he worked in routed business to a competetitor; she was either the competitors wife or business accomplice. The touch tone keypads were designed so as to minimize the amount of time required to key in a phone number. Dozens of keypads designs were tried, that one turned out to be the most efficient. Simple economic motivation really. The less time taken for call setup the less it costs the phone company. -- Larry Cipriani, att!cbnews!lvc or lvc@cbnews.att.com swtch(); /* no deposit, no return */
bass@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu (Vance Bass) (02/09/89)
Heard recently from an IBM field service manager: A huge travel agency in Florida (a major booker of Caribbean cruises for blue-haired retired ladies) recently bought an IBM 3090 to handle the reservation database. When the deal was consummated, the proud new owner asked IBM to install it in a big glass room right behind the receptionist's area so all the customers could see the flashing lights and spinning tape reels as they walked in -- a testimony to the modernity of the agency. Good idea, except there are no blinking lights on a 3090. So the service manager offered to build some. They hired a theatrical designer to come up with a suitably futuristic "set", got curved glass walls to minimize reflections, and installed the mainframe behind the "real-looking" facade. The customer declared that it was exactly what he had in mind, regardless of what the actual computer looks like. Moral: the customer is always right. -- Vance Bass The opinions expressed here are strictly IBM M&SG my own, and do not necessarily Knoxville, TN represent IBM's views on the subject.
msmith@topaz.rutgers.edu (Mark Robert Smith) (02/09/89)
Yet another true IBM story:
My girlfriend's father is a service tech for IBM. He had one computer
that would periodically lock up for no apparent reason. He tried
replacing all sorts of boards, drives, and other hardware to no avail.
Finally, he called in the specialists.
The specialists arrived with many special tools, and in one case a
very special tool. In an old style case, in a custom-molded velour
covered interior, sat the Vibra-matic - a rubber mallet. They had
brought this as a joke, but....
It turned out that the power supply wasn't completely welded to the
ground, and the vibration of the machine caused intermittent power
failures of extremely short duration. This was fixed, and tested with
the specialists banging on the chassis with the Vibra-matic while my
girlfriend's father stuck his head inside to look for vibration.
Luckily the owners of the machine never saw them.
Mark
--
Mark Smith (alias Smitty) "Be careful when looking into the distance,
RPO 1604; P.O. Box 5063 that you do not miss what is right under your nose."
New Brunswick, NJ 08903-5063 {backbone}!rutgers!topaz.rutgers.edu!msmith
msmith@topaz.rutgers.edu R.I.P. Individual Freedoms - 11/8/88peggy@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Peggy Shambo) (02/09/89)
'Way back when I used-to-wuz a computer operator, we had a BIG RED
button on the operator's console for an emergency powerdown. Well,
one night one of the operators accidently dropped something onto it,
and *vooom*.. no system. The next day he was explaining how he did
it.. and *vooom* hit the button.. no system. So they built a little
arch-shaped lucite cover over the button. So what happens then? The
one and the same operator was showing how it could be hit anyway...
and *vooom*... no system!!!!
Last I knew, he still worked there.. but in customer support.. no longer
on the console.. I wonder why? :-)
--
_____________________________________________________________________________
Peg Shambo | Sophisticated Lady, I know. | Ellington/
peggy@ddsw1.mcs.com | You miss the Love you had long ago | Mills/Parish
| And when nobody is nigh, you cry. | haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/09/89)
In article <7129@pucc.Princeton.EDU> BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes: >In 1972, I was assigned the task of writing an interactive user >interface for a statistical analysis program written in FORTRAN IV. >I was told that the users were "MBA types; not very quantitative and >with little background in statistics." That reminded me of a story in Norbert Wiener's autobiography. During World War II he was in charge of a group of people who ran desk calculators to solve ballistics problems. The people were called "computers". He always had trouble getting enough computers to handle the workload, what with the military manpower situation. Once when the Army couldn't get scientific computers they sent him a bunch of accountants. He said these would carry out every calculation to two decimal places and no more! (They thought only in dollars and cents.) haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/09/89)
In article <Feb.8.22.02.43.1989.5589@topaz.rutgers.edu> msmith@topaz.rutgers.edu (Mark Robert Smith) writes: >... >The specialists arrived with many special tools, and in one case a >very special tool. In an old style case, in a custom-molded velour >covered interior, sat the Vibra-matic - a rubber mallet. They had >brought this as a joke, but.... >... One of the design engineers at G.E. kept an electric vibrator in his desk. I think it was originally an engraver, not a massager or sexual vibrator. Anyway, when we seemed to have intermittent problems in a machine he would plug in the vibrator and touch it to each circuit board in the suspect area while running a diagnostic program. At that time G.E. had a small enough number of machines in the field such that when a customer's machine was in bad trouble and the regular field engineers couldn't fix it the company would pull together a small group of engineers and programmers who had participated in the design of the hardware and software and send them to camp out at the site until the problem was solved. So that's where the vibrator probably found the most use. haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) (02/09/89)
In article <1232@raspail.UUCP> bga@raspail.UUCP (Bruce Albrecht) writes: > >... > >seems that RSTS/E sends out a message informing the users that the system is >on its way up, and when the message was sent, the loopback plug turned it >into a user input, to which the system sent a message 'input ignored.', >which also became user input ..., and the system died because it ran out of >free buffers. Sounds like a bug I just fixed in the syslogd we use here at Athena. Our syslogd is modified to allow syslog message to be sent out to users over the network using the zephyr message delivery system. One of the requirements of all pieces of software using zephyr is that they call the routine ZInitialize() before using any zephyr functions. Well, one day I decided that I wanted to receive *all* syslog messages on my workstation, so I placed "*.debug jik" in my syslog.conf file. Instead of receiving all messages, the next time I rebooted the workstation I stopped receiving any messages at all! It turns out that the person who put the zephyr code into the syslogd sources placed it *after* the syslogd init call. The init call attempts to log a startup message on level syslog.warning. Since *.debug gets syslog.warning messages, it attempted to send me the startup message over zephyr. Well, ZInitialize() hadn't been run yet, so this generated an error, which syslogd promptly attempted to log to syslog.error, which therefore attempted to send a notice out to me, which generated an error, which syslogd promptly attmpted.... you get the idea. It eventually died a cruel, horrible death and didn't so much as leave a core file. The fix was nothing more than moving two lines of code eight lines down in the sources. Of course, in the infinite wisdom of the release engineering team here, that fix has *still* not been installed in the standard release, although it's been several months since I submitted it :-) Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 410 Memorial Drive, No. 223F jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Cambridge, MA 02139-4318 Office: 617-253-4261 Home: 617-225-8218
linimon@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Mark Linimon) (02/09/89)
In article <799@n8emr.UUCP>, lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden) writes: > I was at a DECUS > conference about 6 yrs ago when a system programmer was laughing about > programming a Dec machine to seek around on a disk drive enough to cause the > cabinet to rock. I saw either this incident or a similar one -- firsthand. PDP-11/20, Ampex add-on disk, "custom" (phew) controller, 1973. Some late-night programming bums had tortured the diagnostic program to "full seek at switch register speed." After that a quick binary search produced the resonant frequency of the machine. At one point the electronics in the disk had crashed and Ampex was called, and we were fiddling with it to find the resonant frequency. About this time the Ampex field service guy walked in and was _really_ unhappy. Disk was OK, though, it was built like a tank. Mark Linimon Mizar, Inc. uucp: {convex, killer, texsun}!mizarvme!linimon disclaimer: 1973 was a long.....time.....ago....
rosso@sco.COM (Ross Oliver) (02/09/89)
From the "Are You Sure It's Turned On?" file:
I work in the the tech support dept. of SCO, a retail UNIX
house. We once had a customer call in asking how to set up
his machine to run backups unattended at 1am. We explained
to him how to set up a cron job to do this. The next day,
he called back, and the conversation with the tech went
something like this:
Customer: I tried to set up cron to run backups last night,
but it didn't do anything.
Tech: Well, sometimes cron doesn't notice changes you make to
its files. You may have to kill and restart it.
Customer: how do I do that?
Tech: The easiest way is to reboot your machine.
Customer: Oh, we've already done that. We shut it down last
night at 5pm, and brought it back up [realization
sets in here] at 8 this morning...oops.ron_b@apollo.COM (Ronald Buttiglieri) (02/09/89)
In article <2887@sybase.sybase.com> robert@jive.UUCP (Robert Garvey) writes: > > Heard a story about a company whose PC software was being blamed for > the consistent failure to read backup data off floppies. Unable to > determine the cause, they finally sent someone to sit beside the [superfluous type removed] > the drive and started to label it. A blank label was put on and the > disk inserted into the carriage of an electric typewriter... > Here's a few (I'll try to be brief): A friend was doing some PC consulting work on the side. Most of the people he was dealing with started out being completely computer- illiterate. One such gentleman had a database set up for him by my friend. He was given explicit instructions on how to start up every morning and shut down at night. After a week, my friend received a frantic call from his client who said that the computer "couldn't find any data". My friend (who did back up the system previously) told the gentleman what to do, relay the results to him over the phone. Sounded like the data disk was erased, so my friend told him how to copy from the backed-up diskette. Everything went fine, the gentleman thanked him and went about his computing merry way. Next week, the same scenario occurred. And the following week. On the fourth week, my friend (slightly perturbed by now) instructed the client to shut down the system so he could observe the procedure first-hand. My friend went down to his client's place of business and sat down with him. He then asked his client to "go ahead and start 'er up". The gentleman booted the PC, started the software program, and was ready to insert the data disk. He turned around and removed the diskette from his white-board, the diskette being held up with a small magnet. After peeling himself off the wall, my friend went on to instruct his client on the theory of magnetic media (and charged him a sh*tload of money for being so stupid! only kidding :^). My other story again has to do with the perils of the 5 1/4" floppy disk. My 2 college roommates and I were playing some computer games one Friday night (real exciting bunch, huh?) when we decided to make it into a drinking game (typical college attitude). Well, one of my buddies was into slow-gin (sp?). We got a little too happy |^) and spilled one of these drinks all over the diskette (it was out of the drive at the time). We didn't notice this until the next morning (or was it afternoon?). The diskette with our FAVORITE GAME was destroyed! (or so we thought) Just then, my other roommate had the bright notion (actually, he said he heard of this somewhere before) of salvaging the diskette by removing the magnetic media from the jacket (all very sticky at that point) and gently rinsing it under luke-warmwater (from Star Wars, remember him? sorry). We replaced the cleansed and dried floppy media into a clean jacket, copied it onto a good blank disk, and had our game running in no time! From that point on, all floppies toted the phrase, "Dishwasher safe, and just look at that shine!" Ron P.S. I guess I wasn't so brief after all. Sorry.
brent@uwovax.uwo.ca (Brent Sterner) (02/10/89)
Back in my undergrad years, a fellow student had access to the departmental PDP-8. He also had access to the academic centre's machine room, and somehow acquired the PDP-10 sign from that system. The PDP-10 sign was hung proudly on the PDP-8, particularly when a tour was being given. When asked about the sign, his reply was: "Octal".
brent@uwovax.uwo.ca (Brent Sterner) (02/10/89)
A caper which preceeded my employment at this site (and that is a *long* time ago :-) involved on of the first PDP-10 systems ever shipped. (I have trouble remembering if it was serial number 8 or 10, octal or decimal.) The time frame was 1967 or so... Those early PDP-10 systems required assembly and linking of the OS, and deliberate software switch setting to enable certain "features". One release of the OS had a new feature, called "swapping". Hackers have been around a long time. There was a rather strong desire to test this new feature. Problem was, there was no disk available to try it out on. Or was there... Next to the PDP-10 sat an IBM 7040 system. Like the PDP-10 system, it used a 36 bit word. And you guessed it. The 7040 was programmed to read and write the data channel assigned to swapping. And it apparently worked. I don't know the authors of this effort. Names of people who might know more include John McHardy, Dave (?) Freedman (?), and/ or Dave Ellwood. I'd very much like to get this story straight, so if anyone knows the whereabouts and can correct the story, it would be appreciated. b.
barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) (02/10/89)
In article <7129@pucc.Princeton.EDU> BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes: >That's when I realized what nonquantitative really meant. Even >though FORTRAN IV had no character string handling capability >(You had to declare your characters as INTEGER or REAL), I had to >write a routine to read all keyboard input as characters, convert >to numbers, and add a friendly message to explain what a number was. Even if you're not dealing with "MBA types", you should always do this in any serious program. Even people who know what the correct responses are supposed to be sometimes make typos. You said that your program performed range checks, so why did you consider syntax checks unnecessary until the user screwed up? Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
curtc@pogo.GPID.TEK.COM (Curtis Charles) (02/10/89)
A dirty trick I've heard ;-) can be done on your average line printer is to tear the paper, or rather have the printer tear its own paper. This works on printers where the tractors are past the hammers. Anyway, your print job advances the paper 10 lines or so, then prints underscores (or minuses) across the paper; all 132 columns. Overprint them several times to create a perforation. Then formfeed. The weak perforation rips, leaving half the paper in the printer and half nicely folded in the output basket. Most line printers today have a set of tractors below or at the hammers; darn, ya just can't have any fun anymore! ----------------- I'd rather die on K2 than I-5 ------------------------ Curt Charles | "Let our swords run red with the blood of curtc@pogo.GPID.TEK.COM | infidels..." -- Sean Connery
curtc@pogo.GPID.TEK.COM (Curtis Charles) (02/10/89)
Back in the good ol' days of card readers, a game we discussed was how to obtain passwords. Jobs were submitted by setting your deck of cards on a counter. An operator would grab all the jobs on the counter, run them through the reader, and return them with their output later. We're talking CDC hardware here, so various combinations of 6-7-8-9 or 7-8-9 punches indicated End of Job, or End of Record. Well, there was a magic combination (6-8-9?) that was interpreted as "read binary, and ignore other control punches except the magic combination." So, the devious programmer submits two jobs, the first has a program to read binary data, followed by a 6-8-9 and (for the operators consumption only) a 6-7-8-9. The second job just has a 6-8-9 to switch the system out of binary mode. The two jobs are placed on the counter is such a way that the first job will be the first on through the card reader and the second job will be the last one through the card reader, with other students jobs inbetween. Viola', you've got a whole list of accounts and passwords. Of course, the operator might become suspicious when 10 jobs go in and only 1 comes out. Or, he might scramble the order of the jobs left on the counter defeating the plan. I'm not sure anybody actually did this, but it strikes me as an easy way to breach security. ----------------- I'd rather die on K2 than I-5 ------------------------ Curt Charles | "Let our swords run red with the blood of curtc@pogo.GPID.TEK.COM | infidels..." -- Sean Connery
arensb@cvl.umd.edu (Andrew Arensburger) (02/10/89)
Peterson and Silberschatz (_Operating_System_Concepts_, Addison- Wesley, 2nd edition, p.121) point out the importance of good scheduling algorithms when one is designing an operating system: "Rumor has it that when they closed down the 7094 at MIT in 1973, they found a low-priority job that had been submitted in 1967 and had not yet been run."
tkopp@carroll1.UUCP (Tom Kopp) (02/10/89)
Here at Carroll, the main student machine was an old Prime 750 that was running rev-20 of Primos (forgot exact revision number). Well, near the end of a semester last year, there was a student who hadn't slept in a couple of days and he was working on a terminal with nobody else around. (over in one of the other buildings). Anyway, he fell asleep and his head was pressing down on one of the arrow keys - he was in the window editor. I was on duty in the center, which was very busy. Everybody started to complain that their terminals had frozen and they couldn't get any response. I checked the console and there was no halt message. Someone who knew the machine better came into the center and ran a usage report. Seems the computer was kindly giving well over 90% of it's CPU time to the person asleep on his keyboard. :) :) :) -- "Patience is a virtue, and I'm virtually bankrupt!" - Me tkopp@carroll1.UUCP or uunet!marque!carroll1!tkopp Thomas J. Kopp @ Carroll College 3B2 - Waukesha, WI
dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (02/10/89)
Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment
that one can find when reading through source code. Operating-system
programmers seem particularly prone to witty, shamefaced, or other
slightly-off-center comments in their code.
Some examples come to mind (some of the details may be incorrect; it's
been a long time since I read any of this code):
1) DEC RSX-11M (???) operating system. System fault handler module. If
a bus-check fault occurs (indicating possible hardware problems with
some device on the bus), the O/S traps to a fault-handler routine
that tries to identify the offending hardware and reset it. If,
while attempting to recover from a bus-check fault, a second such
fault occurs, the system traps again... this time to a routine which
simply masks off all processor interrupts and hangs in a tight loop.
It's necessary to manually reset the machine to unhang it.
The comment on the loop reads "The death of God left the angels in a
strange position."
2) There are a couple of comments in the output-symbiont (print spooler)
code in the old Xerox CP-V operating system. At the top of a long
block of convoluted and otherwise undocumented code, there appears a
taunting
"See if you can figure out what I'm doing here."
Somewhat further on, there's a really dubious code-construct (I don't
recall just what was being done), adorned with the comment
"I'm ashamed of this"
3) In the synchronous-terminal (BISYNC) module in the CP-6 operating
system's communications software, there's a routine that construct
synchronous data blocks (the ones that start out with the characters
"syn, syn, dle", and so forth). The code comment reads
"With a SYNC SYNC here...
and a SYNC SYNC there..."
The module is labeled "EIE_IO".
4) A related module, which was responsible for driving the Unit Record
Peripheral printer, was labelled "Y@URP".
--
Dave Platt FIDONET: Dave Platt on 1:204/444 VOICE: (415) 493-8805
UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com
INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@sun.com, ...@uunet.uu.net
USNAIL: Coherent Thought Inc. 3350 West Bayshore #205 Palo Alto CA 94303reggie@pdn.nm.paradyne.com (George W. Leach) (02/10/89)
In article <AWM.89Feb6212935@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk> awm@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk (Aled Morris) writes: >>Is it true that the phone company designed touch-tone keyboards upside- >>down from calcutaor, etc numeric keypads because data entry people could >>punch faster than the first generation switching systems could read? >Sounds like the excuse for the existence of the QWERTY layout keyboard >(that is, to make it difficult to use so the mechanics of those early >typerwriters wouldn't jam so often). God, how does such nonsense get out. See R. L. Deininger, "Human Factors Engineering Studies of the Design and Use of Pushbutton Telephone Sets", Bell System Technical Journal, 34(4), July, 1960, pp. 995-1012. for the real story. -- George W. Leach Paradyne Corporation ..!uunet!pdn!reggie Mail stop LG-129 reggie@pdn.nm.paradyne.com P.O. Box 2826 Phone: (813) 530-2376 Largo, FL USA 34649-2826
markz@ssc.UUCP (Mark Zenier) (02/10/89)
In article <911@mailrus.cc.umich.edu>, shane@chablis.cc.umich.edu (Shane Looker) writes: > That (in turn) reminds me of the early 6502 chips (used by the Commodore > PET). Supposedly, some of the first series used in the PET had an > actual HACF (Halt and Catch Fire) instruction. I've been told that > one instruction would cause all the pins to fire at once, thus burning > out the chip. > Er, Halt and Catch Fire (as I remember it) came from the days when people were delving into the undocumented opcodes, one such seeker after truth (as documented in Dr. Dobbs and or Byte) found a couple of interesting instructions on the Motorola 6800. One was store immediate, and another was dubbed HCF. When this opcode was executed, the cpu would fetch bytes continuously (all 64k bytes), forever and the only way to stop it was turn the power off. Mark Zenier uunet!nwnexus!pilchuck!ssc!markz markz@ssc.uucp uunet!amc! uw-beaver!tikal!
BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Barbara Vaughan) (02/10/89)
In article <36279@think.UUCP>, barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) writes: >In article <7129@pucc.Princeton.EDU> BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes: >>That's when I realized what nonquantitative really meant. I had to >>write a routine to read all keyboard input as characters. >>to numbers, and add a friendly message to explain what a number was. > >Even if you're not dealing with "MBA types", you should always do this >in any serious program. Even people who know what the correct >responses are supposed to be sometimes make typos. You said that your >program performed range checks, so why did you consider syntax checks >unnecessary until the user screwed up? >Thinking Machines Corp. As I said in my original posting, this was early 1970's; most input was still on punch cards. The whole idea of "users" other than programmers was a novel one. My program was actually pretty advanced for its time. In order to even make a syntax check, I had to write a number of string-handling functions myself. The syntax checking and character-to-numeric conversions also noticeably slowed down operation of the program. It could be argued that all in all it was better to let the thing bomb. Maybe you're too young to remember computing in the early 70's.
jonathan@itcatl.UUCP (Jonathan Peterson) (02/10/89)
> In one case, we experimented with the Universal Character Set buffer in the > printer. [stuff deleted] > (it automatically opened whenever the printer ran out of paper, to warn the > operator and dump ever-present coffee cups on the floor) and then blew a fuse. > We cleared out. It hadn't occurred to us we could blow fuses with software. > It is REAL easy to blow an internal fuse in most (maybe ALL) IBM PC monocrome monitors running off a hercules graphics adaptor. I got a public domain memory resident memory dumper that fried my monocrome display every time (twice, maybe 3 times) I used it, before remembering that the author said NOT to use it with hercules. (Hey it worked FINE on my EGA :-)). I looked at some Hercules references, saw some warnings, did what they said not to and sure enough! A monocrome monitor frier. Since we had a bunch of spare fuses laying around the lab I worked in at school, I HAD to prove this one to just about eveyone who walked in. Needless to say I usually didn't bother screwing the case of my monitor back together. DISCLAIMER: unless you know what you are doing, I don't recomend opening up anything with a picture tube in it. Remeber there are NO USER SERVICABLE PARTS INSIDE. A repair guy would probably get $30 to replace this fuse and at $60-80 for a monitor, it just ain't worth it. jonny #include <stdisclaimer.h> jonathan@itcatl.gatech.edu| "There are things you don't know about me Dottie... DISC Access | Things you wouldn't understand, Products Group, Inc. | things you couldn't understand, Atlanta, GA | things you SHOULDN'T understand."
soley@ontenv.UUCP (Norman S. Soley) (02/10/89)
In article <345@helios.prosys.se>, ath@helios.prosys.se (Anders Thulin) writes: > > The DataSAAB D21 computer (RIP) had a loudspeaker attached to one of > the bits in its `multiplicator register'. This gadget made it possible > to play tunes by writing suitable programs. One such program I > remember played a tune through the loudspeaker while 'stomping' with > the Potter 1" tape stations. This is actually a fairly common thing, the Apple II ran (or should I say runs, Apple still sells 'em I think) it's speaker pretty much the same way, it had an address and the strobe was actually connected to the speaker, every access to that location would click the speaker, considering how simple it is it's pretty amazing the sounds you could make with it. -- Norman Soley - Data Communications Analyst - Ontario Ministry of the Environment UUCP: uunet!mnetor!ontmoh!ontenv!soley | Contents of this message are OR: soley@ontenv.UUCP | my ideas, not the Ministry's "Stay smart, go cool, be happy, it's the only way to get what you want"
daemon@felix.UUCP (The devil himself) (02/10/89)
-------------------- I once worked at a company that released a version of Unix on a series of 7 floppies for installation on micros. These micros tended to be sold into doctor's and lawyer's offices where there were never any computer literate folk (and the vendors were always scarce when the end user's needed them). Hence we had many amusing phone calls on our 800 line placed by secretaries trying to load Unix. From: merle@felix.UUCP (Linda Merle) One afternoon the following awaited us on our return to lunch: "I'm following your instructions exactly, and I am still having a problem. I have placed floppies 1 through 6 into the floppy drive, but I can't stuff floppy 7 in no matter how hard I try!" Our directions said "Insert next floppy". We forgot to say "Remove floppy and insert the next". We spent the rest of the afternoon seeing how many floppies we could stuff into a floppy. linda -- ====================================================================== "If men are God's gift to women.... He's really into gag gifts!" ======================================================================
cdash@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Charles Shub) (02/10/89)
can anybody who was at Maryland in the 1965 time frame recount the
broken 1401s, alfred e. neumann, and the board of education story?
charlie shub cdash@boulder.Colorado.EDU -or- ..!{ncar|nbires}!boulder!cdash
or even cdash@colospgs (BITNET)loughry@tramp.Colorado.EDU (J. Loughry) (02/10/89)
(This is just a rumor, but it's a *neat* rumor....) It seems (allegedly) that certain Microsoft compilers are smart enough to figure out when they are being benchmarked. Any time the parser sees the "standard" 10,000-prime-numbers algorithm, it dumps that section of code and substitutes a set of hand-tuned, gut-level machine code designed to do that one thing as fast as possible! I don't think it actually just printed them out from a table, but you get the idea.... Also: (this is true) One has to be careful when trying to benchmark optimizing compilers. These things *are* smart enough to notice that while you're doing all those expensive floating point calculations, you're never actually doing anything with the answer...so the compiler just figures it all out once, and replaces all the calculations with a simple assignment. Prime Computer once had a compiler optimize their competitor's benchmark down to a single NOP--and for several years they gleefully used this "performance" figure in their ads. ,------------------------------------------------------------------------------, | J. Loughry: loughry@tramp.colorado.edu | "Bigger bombs for a brighter | | (Hey, Evi, you know any more?) | tomorrow!" |`------------------------------------------------------------------------------'
rang@cpsin3.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang) (02/10/89)
In article <2967@alliant.Alliant.COM> werme@Alliant.COM (Ric Werme) writes: > [ stuff about making printers play music ] > Next I arranged "A Bicycle Built for Two", since that >was the first song a computer ever played (you've heard it in the movie 2001). In 1951 or so, Christopher Strachey wrote a program to play "God Save The King" on the Manchester computer.... +---------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+ | Anton Rang (grad student) | "UNIX: blecch." | "Do worry...be SAD!" | | Michigan State University | rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu | | +---------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/10/89)
In article <1583@uwovax.uwo.ca> brent@uwovax.uwo.ca (Brent Sterner) writes: >... >One release of the OS had a new feature, called "swapping". >... That reminds me. Somebody said he once configured an IBM 370 system to use the card reader/punch as the paging device, and it worked! haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
tcsc@tcsc3b2.UUCP (The Computer Solution Co.) (02/10/89)
In 1968, while attending a large, midwestern University, I worked in the Department for Administrative Research. While providing design and programming assistance to the Alumni Records department, we ran into an interesting problem. The Alumni Records office desired to embed all kinds of information into the key value used to identify each of the school's alumni. This led to a very long, unwieldy key value. When mailing labels were printed, both the key value and a special code used by the mailing machines was required on the top line of the label. We ran out of space on the label. Not to worry! This fancy computer (a "brand new" IBM 360/50 running OS/PCP) could transform a numeric key value into an alphanumeric value by converting the alumni-record key from the too long base-10 number to a shorter base-36 number. Just use all of the letters and digits! Just as we sat back to congratulate ourselves on serving the user's needs with the clever application of technology, we got a call from the mailing house ... "Our delivery man just returned from the Post Office. They won't take your mailing. It looks like somebody tampered with your list. You better get down here right away!" There, on top of one of the trays of mail was a label with the converted alumni record identifier. It read something like ... ------------------------------- | 123FUCK69A4 MM 43210** | | MISS INGRID BEASLEY EDU. 29 | | ... | The mailing was instructing Miss Beasley to mark all further correspondence to the office of Alumni Records with her "new computer identifier code" shown on the label. Needless to say, the Office of Alumni Records failed to see the humor in it all. We thought that at her age, Miss Beasley (Edu. 29) might actually take the "computer's mistake" as a complement! Thereafter, we were instructed to add the "DIRTY-WORD-ROUTINE" which performed a table lookup of every word which a committee of about a dozen of the raunchiest people in the department could come up with. But what about short phrases? And how about maintenance of the table? Whose budget does this come out of? A student programmer, invited to a meeting to "see design in the real world" made an unwanted suggestion. Just convert to base-31 and don't use vowels. It worked. The next year, they changed the alumni records identifier again. I graduated. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David P. Romig | The Computer Solution Company UUCP : tcsc@tcsc3b2 | 1009 Sycamore Square CompuServe: 74116,2345 | P.O. Box 716 Voice : (804)794-3491 x31 | Midlothian, VA 23113-0716
daa@siesoft (David Allsopp) (02/10/89)
Well, I heard the following story on a Quality Management course... Apparently a certain (IBM) well-known (IBM) computer company (IBM) had one quality manager who was an absolute b*st*rd, and when this guy was put in charge of the team who were designing a new tape deck, they resolved that, no matter what the cost in unpaid overtime, they were going to create a product with *absolutely no faults*. Well, they sweated blood on this thing, and when the time came for the big launch, they were sure that even this guy wouldn't be able find fault with it. Well, the chap turned up and loaded a small macro into the controller, which went <fast forward>....EMERGENCY STOP! pause... <fast rewind>.....EMERGENCY STOP! pause... <fast forward>....EMERGENCY STOP! etc. After a while, the cabinet started rocking, and eventually it fell over. Apparently he had calculated the resonant frequency of the cabinet... BTW, anyone else remember (and could re-post) the story about the Real Programmer, working on a machine with drum memory, who wrote a program with an infinite loop that nevertheless terminated? -- David Allsopp ...!uunet!ukc!siesoft!daa ukc!siesoft!daa@uunet.uu.net Whats yellow and points north? A magnetic banana!!
laverman@prismab.prl.philips.nl (Bert Laverman) (02/10/89)
At the Technical University of Twente (The Netherlands), the computer centre had a big blue colored PDP-10, and an orange colored PDP-20. (both under TOPS-10; too much work re-educating everyone) About two years ago the PDP-10 was replaced, as they could get a 20 for a nice discount. (DEC was dumping) The machines (colored orange and perfect twins) were called THT-1 and THT-2. Both were serviced once a week, and at one time the THT-1 users got a nice surprise... when after servicing the THT-2 the operater re-booted the THT-1 as a mistake! Since then the two have large signs near the control-buttons telling which is which. Bert Laverman #disclaimer: I write for myself.
rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) (02/10/89)
jonathan@itcatl.gatech.edu writes: >DISCLAIMER: unless you know what you are doing, I don't recomend opening up >anything with a picture tube in it. Remeber there are NO USER SERVICABLE >PARTS INSIDE. A repair guy would probably get $30 to replace this fuse and >at $60-80 for a monitor, it just ain't worth it. >jonny In the process of trying to hook up a hard drive a few weeks ago (minus documentation, of course) I was given some incorrect instructions over the telephone, resulting in a loud "crack!" from the IBM-PC's power supply. My "assistant" panicked, "omigod we just blew up a power supply!" I assured him not to worry, I had insurance. Two hours later, after finally managing to open up the power supply, I discovered (to my immense lack of astonishment) that the fuse had blown. Of course, IBM has soldered the fuse in place. How often to you blow a fuse in a power supply? The insurance company is insisting on buying me a new PS. I won't argue with them...
jefu@pawl.rpi.edu (Jeffrey Putnam) (02/10/89)
In article <6761@pogo.GPID.TEK.COM> curtc@pogo.GPID.TEK.COM (Curtis Charles) writes: >Back in the good ol' days of card readers, a game we discussed was how >to obtain passwords. ... Reminds me of the Univac 1100 series machine i used in grad school. Accounts were tight (student accounts always seem to be tight.) so getting borrowed accounts was a prime activity (it was considered illegal, but when you could blow your entire student computing account in a single run, what else could you do?). I discovered that when you asked for memory (or was it disk, or both?) what you got was not zeroed out. This meant that you could just keep asking for, then freeing memory and looking through it for the spots where people had entered their accounting information. Since every job started with a card that looked something like "@run xxx,username,passwd" (or something similar), it was easy enough just to run through memory looking for strings that looked like "@run", then save them and eventually print them out. By the time i figured this out though, i was a TA with essentially unlimited accounts. I did try it for amusement sake and in a fifteen minute run managed to collect somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred different run cards. jeff putnam -- "You never learn anything... jefu@pawl.rpi.edu -- ... You just get used to it."
uucibg@sw1e.UUCP (3929]) (02/10/89)
In article <20324@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> cc1@cs.ucla.edu (Ken Bartlett, Net.Caddy) writes: > >I have a very funny computer anecdote to share! > [fake computer story in generally poor taste] > >----====----====----====----====----====----====----====----====----====---- >cc1@cs.ucla.edu Ken Bartlett izzy947@oac.ucla.edu > "Yes indeed, computer folklore--humor in its highest form." >====----====----====----====----====----====----====----====----====----==== I find it interesting that you seem to be the *only* person so far who has complained about the cross-posting. Do you truly feel that you have the right to impose your value system upon the rest of the net? Next time, please try reason before a tirade. Brian R. Gilstrap Southwestern Bell Telephone One Bell Center Rm 17-G-4 ...!ames!killer!texbell!sw1e!uucibg St. Louis, MO 63101 ...!bellcore!texbell!sw1e!uucibg (314) 235-3929 #include <std_disclaimers.h>
indigo@reed.UUCP (Seven Chinese Brothers) (02/11/89)
In article <2858@ddsw1.MCS.COM> peggy@ddsw1.UUCP (Peggy Shambo) writes: >A friend was having a problem with a sticky keyboard for his Mac. >He was talking to another friend who off-handedly suggested putting >into the dishwasher to clean it up. So, my friend did just that! >Needless to say, the keyboard didn't function any too well after >that. :-) The Mac keyboards are not built sturdy enough! :-) VT220 keyboards are machine-washable. I'm serious. My friend's kid once spilled coke on his father's keyboard. When the father called a Digital repairman, he was told to put it in a dish washer. He did, and it worked perfectly after that.... --Hiroshi -- "I think you could be photogenic in a Dada sort of way..." --Ramona Brush-Vreeland >Hiroshi Ogura< ...{tektronix,ogccse}!reed!indigo Catalyst Extraordinarie 3755 SE Reedway, Portland Oregon 97202 Ewe Ess of Eigh 503-774-5061
berman-andrew@CS.YALE.EDU (Andrew P. Berman) (02/11/89)
This supposedly occured at Princeton to a grad student who later became an assistant professor.... Some grad students were annoyed with this particular grad. He was known for being a rogue-maniac. They were using a UNIX system. The other guys used a security hole in 'Mail' to obtain privileged status. They altered rogue a bit to check if this person was playing the game, and to make the game much easier if it was him. The next time the poor guy played it, he won. But his name didn't appear on the high score list. I think they also screwed up 'vi' to check if he was using it and to reverse all the commands if he was...
jgm@k.gp.cs.cmu.edu (John Myers) (02/11/89)
Speaking of interesting comments: In the 4.3BSD kernel, there is this gem in sys/quota_kern.c: #define NDQHASH 51 /* a smallish prime */ -- _.John G. Myers Internet: John.Myers@cs.cmu.edu (412) 268-5655 LoseNet: ...!seismo!ihnp4!wiscvm.wisc.edu!give!up "Whenever faced with a problem, some people say `Lets use AWK.' Now, they have two problems." -- D. Tilbrook --
ritchie@hpldola.HP.COM (Dave Ritchie) (02/11/89)
>hpldola:comp.misc bga@raspail.UUCP (Bruce Albrecht) / 11:43 am Feb 8, 1989 / >When Grinnell College upgraded from a PDP 11/45 to an 11/70, the DEC field >engineer finished the installation and booted the 11/70. It started up, and >15 seconds later, it promptly died. He tried it again, and it failed again. >He called up his superior, who thought about it for a few moments, asked him >if he had removed the loopback plugs on all the serial interface boards. It >seems that RSTS/E sends out a message informing the users that the system is >on its way up, and when the message was sent, the loopback plug turned it >into a user input, to which the system sent a message 'input ignored.', >which also became user input ..., and the system died because it ran out of >free buffers. >---------- You could do this with RSX-11 by holding down a function key on a 9600 baud VT100. RSX would allocate a 80 byte buffer whenever a ESC character was received. Eventually, free pool memory would be exhausted and the system would crash. (We fixed it so that the offending terminal was ignored and all the allocated pool packets were freed, after which we would restart the OS.) Dave
gshippen@pollux.usc.edu (Gregory Shippen) (02/11/89)
Way back in the stone-age of microprocessors I worked for a small company which made a TI9900 based machine for dentist offices. It included an old Diablo 10Mb disk drive. This was a 5Mb fixed, 5 Mb removeable type drive. These were the unsealed non-winchester type of course so you had a filter inside the drive to keep the disk area clean. (You know, the kind you put in expensive computer room). I was involved in fixing many of the disk drives that came back after suffering a dreaded head crash. I remember distinctly getting one disk drive back. We opened the drive up and removed the fixed disk since it had crashed. The platter had a distinct faded look, the usual dark brown had turned into a very light brown. The drive was filthy. Due to the strange shape of the drive, we asked the field service guy just where the drive had been. He explained that the doctor who owned the office had put the entire system except the terminal in was described to me as "the green-house". Looking back I suspect it was probably something akin to a solarium! He probably didn't like the noise the system made (ahh for the good old days when disk drives effectively simulated jet aircraft on takeoff) and put the system in the nearest place where nobody would be bothered. Sadly, I suspect that the company's demise some years later was due largely to the fact that the hardware required careful preventative maintenance and was unsuited to the turn it on and forget about it mentality of dentist's assistants and receptionists. Therein points I suspect to a major element in the ultimate success of PC's -- winchester disks. Turn it on and forget it! Greg Shippen gshippen@pollux.usc.edu University of Southern California ******************************************************************************
pmj@warwick.UUCP (Paul M Jaggard) (02/11/89)
... or there's the one about the person who took backup copies of floppy discs
using a photocopier!
... or the Hampshire teacher who called in a technician to fix a new disc
drive - they found a cassette tape jammed in the slot!
+ Paul +
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Jaggard pmj@cs.warwick.ac.uk +44 203 715905 / Computer Science
-------------------------------------------------------/ University of Warwick
/ Coventry
(awaiting delivery of an amusing quote...) / ENGLAND
------------------------------------------------------------------------------darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson) (02/11/89)
In article <20373@coherent.com> dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: >Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment >that one can find when reading through source code. Operating-system >programmers seem particularly prone to witty, shamefaced, or other >slightly-off-center comments in their code. Similarly, I was reading the microfiche for MAIL.EXE in VMS (hopefully, I'll never have to read the microfiche again!). MAIL.EXE is a WIDELY used program on VMS upon which the daily life of a lot of companies depend. After poring through the listings, I finally found the main module. The header started off with a brief description, authors, pages worth of revision information, etc. At the very bottom of the comment were the words (from memory): I originally wrote this program as an excersize to learn VMS... Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com) Can you "Spot the Looney"?
darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson) (02/11/89)
In article <6507@boulder.Colorado.EDU> loughry@tramp.Colorado.EDU (J. Loughry) writes: > Prime Computer once had a compiler optimize their competitor's > benchmark down to a single NOP--and for several years they gleefully > used this "performance" figure in their ads. This sort of stuff used to irk me back in college. I wanted to see the assembler output of a Pascal program for my assembly language class. So I would write programs that were nothing more than assignments, function calls, etc. I would then compile them on some arcane system that used the same chip as the machines in our class. Trouble was, when I forgot to actually use what I wrote, the compiler optimized them away. I did have a rather large function compile to a return instruction. The optimizer wasn't all that clever though, occasionally it would remove the useless code, but leave the surrounding loop :-) Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com) Can you "Spot the Looney"?
peggy@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Peggy Shambo) (02/11/89)
I used to work at a Honeywell installation, where we had a super-genius
of a systems engineer, affectionately known as "Gentle Ben". This man
could read system dump the way most people would read the funny papers
(or the net? :-) He was the core of systems intelligence.
But as super-genius people are sometimes labelled "eccentric", Gentle Ben
was not an exception:
Smoking in the computer room was verboten, and he knew it. But he would
light up right at the operator's console, take a few drags, then suddenly
remember something and dash off, stuffing his *lit* cigarette into his
coat pocket... then wonder where the burning smell was coming from.
Drinking was also a no-no in the computer room, but Ben would stop by the
coffee machine on his way into the computer room and walk in with his cup
in one hand, his cigarette in the other. On several occasions he was
observed to place his cigarette *into* the coffee cup (still with coffee
in it) and a few minutes later, while engrossed in problem solving, take
a sip of the coffee... cigarette and all.. and not even notice!!!
Peggy
--
_____________________________________________________________________________
Peg Shambo | Sophisticated Lady, I know. | Ellington/
peggy@ddsw1.mcs.com | You miss the Love you had long ago | Mills/Parish
| And when nobody is nigh, you cry. | haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/11/89)
In article <1690@ssc.UUCP> markz@ssc.UUCP (Mark Zenier) writes: >Er, Halt and Catch Fire (as I remember it) came from the days when >people were delving into the undocumented opcodes... Well, there was an article in Datamation in the mid 60s that was the first I remember seeing of lists of funny instruction mnemonics. But it was probably years in gathering. HCF Halt and Catch Fire BST Backspace and Stretch Tape XPI Execute Programmer Immediately ACA Add and Clear Accumulator are a few of the ones I remember. Now in the Burroughs B6500 there are a couple that are for real - WHOI - read processor identification register HEYU - interrupt all processors haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/11/89)
In article <557@rpi.edu> jefu@pawl.rpi.edu (Jeffrey Putnam) writes: > >I discovered that when you asked for memory (or was it disk, or both?) what >you got was not zeroed out. In RSTS/E you could ask for disk space and what you got was not zeroed out. So you could scan it and read entire files - in fact somebody wrote a utility for recovering accidentally deleted files. UNIX is less rewarding that way, since it rarely puts successive blocks of a file into contiguous blocks on disk. haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
jms@antares.UUCP (Joe Smith) (02/11/89)
In article <2882@ddsw1.MCS.COM> peggy@ddsw1.UUCP (Peggy Shambo) writes: >In article <1742@hp-sdd.hp.com> hinojosa@hp-sdd.hp.com.UUCP (Daniel Hinojosa) writes: :>These chaps read the chain and created a file in their system that :>had all of the characters of one pass in it. They gave the command to :>print the file. Upon doing so the printer starts to spin the chain, :>then SMACK! Trying to print all of those characters at once while the :>chain was moving, didn't quite work. The fellow said they found :>the print characters in various parts of their office for years :>therafter. > >I used to be a computer operator (HISI) and we had a regular print test >program that printed all the characters.. in a stepped version like this: >abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890!@#$%^&*() > abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890!@#$%^&*() >Anyway, we never snapped a print chain on those. And we did a print test... I have yet to see a print chain that had the characters in order like that. They have the characters in a scrambled order instead of ASCII order just so that "barber pole" patterns would not cause problems. The original poster mentioned that the perpatrators read the chain to determine the worst case line, which is something that is not likely to be printed. I was going to do just that in college, but never got around to it (something about being hired by the Computing Center takes the fun out of such pranks). -- Joe Smith (408)922-6220 | jms@antares.Tymnet.COM or jms@opus.Tymnet.COM McDonnell Douglas FSCO | UUCP: ...!{ames,pyramid}!oliveb!tymix!antares!jms PO Box 49019, MS-D21 | PDP-10:JMS@F74.Tymnet.COM CA license plate:"POPJ P," San Jose, CA 95161-9019 | narrator.device: "I didn't say that, my Amiga did!"
dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Auntie Dion) (02/11/89)
In article <2774@rti.UUCP> jbs@rti.UUCP (Joe Simpson) writes: >When I was an undergrad at UNC, I spent a little time in the graduate >department's graphics lab. When one of the grads was showing us the >hardware, he pointed out a large rubber mallet sitting beside one of the >cabinets. He said that the connection between the chips' prongs and their >sockets sometimes became poor, and often when the system acted up the cure >was to bang on the cabinet with the mallet to reseat the chips. Long before there was DEC we had an SDS 920 computer. These had printed circuit cards with gold plated contacts and gas tight connectors. They were a bitch to reseat. You had to pound them into the socket with a mallet. One day, as were were reseating the card a senior executive wandered by and saw what was happening and said "I've heard of kicking coke machines but this is ridiculous!" The same computer also must have been pregnant as it had "morning sickness". In the morning when we turned it one, it wouldn't work until we let it warm up for a half an hour. Then there was the time it broke. Most of it still worked but the shift instructions wouldn't work, we called it a shiftless computer. Then there was the Army tech that was lazy and dropped a screw driver [so he says] from the Supply bus to the AC line and fried every transistor in the computer. In shipping it back to the US of A for repair it was accidentally pushed off of a loading dock. We learned about how to to auto body work on a computer. Poor SDS 920, last I heard it was still serving our country in a nameless rural area and the technicians go out to Radio Shack to buy transistors to repair it. -- =Dennis L. Mumaugh Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.com
dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Auntie Dion) (02/11/89)
In article <6507@boulder.Colorado.EDU> loughry@tramp.Colorado.EDU (J. Loughry) writes: > >(This is just a rumor, but it's a *neat* rumor....) > > It seems (allegedly) that certain Microsoft compilers are smart > enough to figure out when they are being benchmarked. Any time I have heard of a certain compiler vendor that designed their floating point subroutines for optimum use with bench marks. Certain routines cache their last argument and its value, for example: int getpid(){ static int pid = 0; if( pid ) return pid; return( pid = _getpid()); } where _getpid is the UNIX system call. This is also done for certain well known arguments in trig functions. What with optimizers inserting inline function code and moving invariant function calls outside of a loop, its a wonder a benchmark means anything these days. -- =Dennis L. Mumaugh Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.com
dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Auntie Dion) (02/11/89)
In article <6504@boulder.Colorado.EDU> cdash@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Charles Shub) writes: >can anybody who was at Maryland in the 1965 time frame recount the >broken 1401s, alfred e. neumann, and the board of education story? The 1401 I can't help you with unless it is part of the following real story: I was at UoM from 1967-1975 so ... The operating system was derived from the University of Michigan and had the pecuilarity that every job required output, both printer and punch. This was even if the job bombed completely. An ABEND was okay as it gave a core dump, but a bad set of cards wouldn't result in anything, so .... The systems people arranged for in this circumstance to insert a computer picture of Alfred E. Neumann with the caption "What me worry" into the output stream. Also, each compilation that didn't succeed resulted in a card placed in the punch stream with "FAILED" in block letters. The day came when the Board of Regents toured the computer center with its several million dollar computer. As a Regent was looking at the printer it just so happened that a bunch of jobs in a row all failed, leaving the line printer printer about 20 pictures of Alfred for the Regents to view. The FAILED cards we'd collect and paper our offices with. -- =Dennis L. Mumaugh Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.com
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/12/89)
In article <391@prles2.UUCP> laverman@prismab.prl.philips.nl (Bert Laverman) writes: > >At the Technical University of Twente (The Netherlands), >the computer centre had a big blue colored PDP-10, and an >orange colored PDP-20. Some years ago I was invited to dinner by a young lady. Her housemate invited a guy who was an engineer for Amdahl. He told me that one of the first Amdahl shipments was to Texas A&M University. The Amdahl machines were painted bright orange, which is the color of - gasp - University of Texas, A&Ms ancient rival. So they had to make a very quick maroon paint job. haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
federico@actisb.UUCP (Federico Heinz) (02/12/89)
Well, there are two stories that the people here at work keep repeating
(i's hard for a week to pass by without you hearing at least one of
them), so I thought I may as well torture you. Both stories are told as
"It actually happened to <some guy who no longer works here, the name
varies with the moon phase> with a customer (who nobody seems to
remember)".
The said Honorable Customer X called to say that he couldn't read the
data he wrote to floppy disk. He could write his files OK, but when he
read them, he either had read errors or trash (this part of the story
also varies with the season). He tried with various diskettes, alway
with the same result. This was told through the phone, and the Guy That
No Longer Works Here said we would probably be able to diagnose the
problem if the customer sent us a copy of the floppy. Two days later, he
received an envelope from the customer. It contained two photocopies of
the disk (one of the front and another of the back, since it was a
double-sided disk).
The other story says that a customer wanted something fixed for a
particular hardware setup for which we had no docs. The problem shouldn't
be difficult to solve, but we needed the docs and the customer was
really in a hurry. The person in charge of the thing asked the customer
if he would be willing to FAX us a certain part of the manuals. After a
moment's thought, he answered "OK, but only if you promise to FAX it
back!"
I'm really sorry
--
Federico Heinz "I can resist anything but temptation"
-- Oscar Wilde
From Europe: ...!mcvax!unido!tub!actisb!federico
From elsewhere: ...!uunet!pyramid!/tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (02/12/89)
In article <20373@coherent.com> dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: >Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment >that one can find when reading through source code. Operating-system >programmers seem particularly prone to witty, shamefaced, or other >slightly-off-center comments in their code. Ah yes. For another fine example of the wonderful earthiness which programmes sometimes enjoy, check the terminal.el code from the lisp directory of the standard GNU distribution. It is quite colourful in places. One of the things that I like about Stallman is that he didn't take out some of the personal barbs like a fascist. Maybe he left them for prudence, maybe because he thought the were funny. In either case, I respect that he left them alone. Dave -- tale@rpitsmts.bitnet, tale%mts@rpitsgw.rpi.edu, tale@pawl.rpi.edu
tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (02/12/89)
In article <6321@saturn.ucsc.edu> haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) writes:
In RSTS/E you could ask for disk space and what you got was not zeroed out.
So you could scan it and read entire files - in fact somebody wrote a
utility for recovering accidentally deleted files.
Gosh, that's hardly uncommon. In fact, MS-DOS simply clears the first
character in the disk directory to delete a file. If you don't write
any information to the disk, reconstructing the file (fragmented or
not) is a very trivial matter. Of course, MS-DOS has no real concept
of file permissions and such, so if you can get someone's disk it is
quite easy to read anything on it.
Please not that this is for old versions of MS-DOS, I have no idea
what the state of that world is like now. About all I use my
original-model IBM PC for anymore is a terminal to connect to bigger
machines.
Dave
--
tale@rpitsmts.bitnet, tale%mts@rpitsgw.rpi.edu, tale@pawl.rpi.edujackson@adobe.COM (Curtis Jackson) (02/12/89)
Hmmmm, been reading this thread for a while now and thought I'd
contribute to the massacre (pronounced mas-uh-crE, of course ;-)
I'll refrain (I hope) from duplicating any of the stories that have
already been related here:
A disgruntled employee at NavOCEANO (Naval Ocean Office, I believe)
across the street from me when I worked at NORDA (Naval Ocean R&D
Activity) decided to get even with the locals. There was a large
Univac installation there, and some ultra-high-speed card readers.
He hollowed out an entire box of punch cards (about 2.5 feet of cards,
for all you youngsters) and filled them with old old old bananas.
He then submitted this deck as a job. The operators were used to
multi-box jobs, so they usually just picked up the entire box of
cards and dumped them in the high-speed readers. It took over 3
weeks of maintenance before the reader was working reliably again,
and the control room reeked of banana for weeks afterwards...
When crucial data on tape was lost at my university, the gurus
in the computer room would retrieve as much data as possible, then
fill in the gaps by soaking the tapes in a solution that made the
individual bits show up as 1 or 0 (dark or light) under a magnifier;
they'd then hand-assemble the missing sections from the visual inspection.
I once spent an entire night (over 12 hours) trying to get my
compiler (working up to that point) to work again so I could work
on it some more for my compilers course. At the end, I had reduced
the problem down to a program (C code) that basically declared an
integer 'i', said "i=5", then printed 'i'. The program printed a
floating-point number... I was so angry I got the idiot who had been
mucking around with the C compiler from Bell Labs in the lab at
7am in Sunday morning to fix the damned thing.
Our aged PDP-10 finally died one weekend when we had an unusually
hot Sunday (there was no operator support on Sundays until 6pm)
and it turned out the fall leaves had never been cleared from the
AC vents by the university physical plant. The temperature got
over 100 degrees F in the computer room, and the old CPU on the
10 wouldn't even whimper afterwards.
It's amazing how many of us remember the "Good Ole Days" --
didn't you hate patching paper tape? Yeecchhh.
--
Curtis Jackson @ Adobe Systems in Mountain View, CA (415-962-4905)
Internet: jackson@adobe.com uucp: ...!{decwrl|sun}!adobe!jacksonmeissner@tiktok.dg.com (Michael Meissner) (02/12/89)
One day about 3 years back (when I was still in Mass.), a problem was reported with one of the AOS/VS system programs, which is fairly routine. The person in devlopment (which for that product was in Mass.) asked the customer support person (which is located in Atlanta) for a copy of the tape that demonstrated the problem. Evidently, the customer support person was still learning the ropes, because he/she put the tape on an office copier, and sent up a photocopy of the tape (rather than a magnetic copy). We all got a laugh out of it. To make things even better, the OS person was able to tell from the paper label on the tape, that not enough information was supplied, and that we would have to ask the customer for the requisite info. -- Michael Meissner, Data General. Uucp: ...!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!meissner Arpa: meissner@dg-rtp.DG.COM (or) meissner%dg-rtp.DG.COM@relay.cs.net
aberg@math.rutgers.edu (Hans Aberg) (02/12/89)
This computer musician who lives up in Ithaca, NY, told the following story: He had tried out his Macintosh MIDI equipment, and everything had worked perfectly. In those days, in the early mid-eighties, one had to rely on 512K, and an external disk drive (no hard drive). Then he went up to Chicago(?) for a performance for an audience. He picked up all the equipment on the stage -- it didn't work at all. So the next couple of hours he tries to figure out what is wrong, and the audience is starting to show up... But then, Aha!, somebody discovered that the external disk drive was placed on the left side of the Macintosh -- not on the right side, as it should according to the manual. The Mac has its transformers on the left side, and their magnetic field interfered with the drive. So they moved the drive over to the right side, everything all of a sudden working perfectly, and the performance was carried in land. Hans Aberg
friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) (02/12/89)
In article <20373@coherent.com>, dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: > Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment > that one can find when reading through source code. I've got three: The 3B2 defines a couple of magic numbers used by the firmware to keep track of system state. <sys/firmware.h> defines some of them to be: #define FATAL 0xFEEDBEEFL /* fatal error, reset system */ #define VECTOR 0xA11C0DEDL /* reset goes to rst_handler */ #define REBOOT 0x8BADF00DL /* reboot w/o diags for UN*X */ #define REENTRY 0xADEBAC1EL /* reenter fw from a reset w/o failure mesage */ --------- In the source to `mk' (a better `make', available from the AT&T Toolchest), there is a define for the mechanism used to mark certain characters in a char array as special: #define EBIT 0x80 /* sorry japan */ It's left as an exercise to the reader to determine why this is funny. -------- Finally, us old Gosmacs hackers will recognize the pseudo-famous comment in display.c by James Gosling, then at CMU: /**************************************************************** [ large, cool skull-and-crossbones pix deleted ] ************** * BEWARE!! * ************** All ye who enter here: Most of the code in this module is twisted beyond belief! Tread carefully. If you think you understand it, You Don't, So Look Again. ****************************************************************/ He was not kidding. Really. Steve -- Stephen J. Friedl 3B2-kind-of-guy friedl@vsi.com V-Systems, Inc. I speak for you only attmail!vsi!friedl Santa Ana, CA USA +1 714 545 6442 {backbones}!vsi!friedl --------Barbara Bush on... on... No, I just can't do it...--------
sukenick@ccnysci.UUCP (SYG) (02/12/89)
One of my firstjobs (in college) was to interface a PDP-8 to a spectrometer.. except that the PDP didn't work and there was no service contract, etc. Turning on the system revealed a strange look to the front panel lights, which meant a blown fuse, which I changed and it blew again. I pulled out the drawer with the bus & boards and noticed a funny cloud above them which turned out to be some sort of fruit flies. (that should have warned me off :-)) Pulling the boards and shaking the tray with the bus upside down got out lots of dust,small pieces of wire,insulation and a few dead roaches. It worked after the cleanout........ Soon the application was written and the machine was interfaced, and the setup was getting lots of use from people doing their experiments and storing data. Every once in a while though, the entire sytem would freeze: the lights would indicate the last instruction/address and none of the front panel switchs would work. Powering it down and up would sometimes work, but not always. It always happened when the computer accessed the clock with a particular instruction. DEC,usually helpful, said "run the diagnostic" but the diagnostic froze at that instruction intermittantly also thus revealing no new information. The clock was sent out for repair; they could not figure out what was wrong except "darndess thing; same thing happens here too!". A different clock board also did the same thing... I found that shaking the entire bus would always get the thing working. It was a lot of fun when they "call in the computer expert"; I pull out the drawer, and while they expect some sophisticated fix, I give it a good hard shake, and gently slide it in and start it up. This fix would always work. After one time, the computer started to blow boards. It seems that someone saw me shaking the machine to fix, and decided to do it on his own, except he didnt power down first....(He stopped using the system after he was caught plugging the BNC from the photo tube power supply (a kilovolt or two) into the PDP's counter input.(it wasnt on at the time). (I finally discovered that the problem with the closk was powersupply: the traces were thin and drew enough current so that chips on top of the board were getting 4.6 volts: (minimum needed 4.75 TTL) Tweaking the power supply up a little to ~5.1 V solved the problem and it's been running fine for many years now.
bill@cosi.UUCP (Bill Michaelson) (02/13/89)
In article <7136@pucc.Princeton.EDU>, BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Barbara Vaughan) writes: ] In article <36279@think.UUCP>, barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) writes: ] >In article <7129@pucc.Princeton.EDU> BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes: ] >>That's when I realized what nonquantitative really meant. ] >>I had to ] >>write a routine to read all keyboard input as characters. ] >>to numbers, and add a friendly message to explain what a number was. ] > ] >Even if you're not dealing with "MBA types", you should always do this ] >in any serious program. Even people who know what the correct ] >responses are supposed to be sometimes make typos. You said that your ] >program performed range checks, so why did you consider syntax checks ] >unnecessary until the user screwed up? ] >Thinking Machines Corp. ] ] As I said in my original posting, this was early 1970's; most input ] was still on punch cards. The whole idea of "users" other than ] programmers was a novel one. My program was actually pretty ] advanced for its time. In order to even make a syntax check, I had ] to write a number of string-handling functions myself. The syntax ] checking and character-to-numeric conversions also noticeably slowed ] down operation of the program. It could be argued that all in ] all it was better to let the thing bomb. Maybe you're too young to ] remember computing in the early 70's. Well, how did the non-numeric field ever get past the program on the keypunch drum card??? (-: -- Bill Michaelson - Reply to: princeton!mccc!cosi!bill also at... Voice 609-771-6705 CompuServe 72416,1026
rick@pavlov.bcm.tmc.edu (Richard H. Miller) (02/13/89)
We have had a DEC-10 computer for 14 years. The KA-10 and KI-10 computers have
a very large number of DEC FLIP-CHIP modules in the processor bay as well has
the channel and controller cabinets. Over time, some of these module back out
of their connectors which can lead to intermittent failures. A favorate trick
of our engineers is to take a card and ripple it down the rows of logic cards
while running diagnostics. When the loose card is found, it will usually stop
the diagnostic routine and then the card can be reseated.
Richard H. Miller Email: rick@bcm.tmc.edu
Asst. Dir. for Technical Support Voice: (713)798-3532
Baylor College of Medicine US Mail: One Baylor Plaza, 302H
Houston, Texas 77030deraadt@xenlink.UUCP (Theo A. DeRaadt) (02/13/89)
Anyone know the story wherein someone managed to lock the parking brakes on a vertically mounted drum? That's the one where the drum (supposidly) went through the wall... Anyone know it? <tdr.
sukenick@ccnysci.UUCP (SYG) (02/13/89)
>[pdp-10]
The science division in CCNY had a PDP-10 (`Dec System 10', that is :-) )
for general use. One problem was that people were complaining that they
were logging in and all their files were gone! The problem was simple:
what happened when they logged out previously.
To logout, the command is KILL or K and an option.
K/I would log you out after querying you about what to do with
each of your files. K/F would happily log you out fast and keep
all your files. K/D would happily log you out and delete all your
files......the `D' key is right next to the `F' key.....
(Yipes! ^C ^C ^C ^C ^C why doesnt ^C work when you need it ???? :-) )
(This nice option was eventually disabled:-))emoffatt@cognos.uucp (Eric Moffatt) (02/14/89)
> From: curtc@pogo.GPID.TEK.COM (Curtis Charles) > > [ stuff about how all jobs were submitted deleted ] > > We're talking CDC hardware here, so various combinations of 6-7-8-9 or > 7-8-9 punches indicated End of Job, or End of Record. Well, there was > a magic combination (6-8-9?) that was interpreted as "read binary, and > ignore other control punches except the magic combination." > > This reminds me of a particularly nasty trick we (myself and a fellow named Mike something) played in High School(1972?). In our FORTRAN course all of the students card decks were packed in boxes and shipped out to run at some magic computer elsewhere in the city, turnaround was about 2 days. Well, Mike was somewhat of a system hack and had "discovered" that there was a way to read all other JCL (yep, IBM) in a deck as data. We just had to try it out :-). I wrote a super simple parser (scan a line for READ, WRITE, DO...) and an output formatter which did a fair job of duplicating the real compiler's output. We just slipped the "special" JCL in at the start of the deck and viola...the student's received realistic looking compiles but with fake error messages like "READ statement in wrong place" or "You cannot WRITE here". Well, the instructor just didn't know what to make of this (he was new to this stuff too) and we finally had to 'fess up. As I remember it I got one of my very few detentions for costing the class a whole computer run but it was worth it to see the teacher's face. -- Eric (Pixel Pusher) Moffatt - Cognos Incorporated: 3755 Riverside Drive Voice: (613)738-1440 (Research) FAX: (613)738-0002 P.O. Box 9707 uucp: uunet!mitel!sce!cognos!emoffatt Ottawa, Ontario, arpa/internet: emoffatt%cognos.uucp@uunet.uu.net CANADA K1G 3Z4
tjr@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (thomas.j.roberts) (02/14/89)
At Purdue University, 1968-71, the Computer Center used a CDC-6500 machine, and was involved in developing a new OS for it, called MACE. MACE was based upon CDC's OS, in large part. Student accounts were not permitted to use the card punch, and were strictly limited on the number of pages per job. However, some wise guy discovered that the limits were applied AFTER each buffer was output. So, by declaring a VERY LARGE buffer, huge amounts of paper and/or cards could be produced. [ most of us used this to obtain cards, as this was a card-intensive system devoid of interactive terminals, and permanent disk space was not available to students. ] Tom Roberts att!ihnet!tjr
mlloyd@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Lloyd) (02/14/89)
Anyone remember the Act Sirius 1 machine? It was expensive, powerful and pre-PC, and totally failed to take off (despite impressive graphics). Anyway, the story was reported that many users complained of inability to boot off the supplied system disks. The response was always the same - the user must have caused magnetic damage. Apparently, they claimed that a common source of this was to leave the disks next to an old (mechanical bell) telephone for more than six rings! Eventually the truth came out - they were indeed shipping blank system disks! Someone in Quality Control went quite red! Mike. -- Mike Lloyd, Dept of Statistics, |"Does anyone understand what is happening? .. Trinity College, Dublin, | They tell me this is living - Ireland. | They tell me this is LIFE!" (mlloyd@maths.tcd.ie) | - Michael Been, of "The Call"
wwp@homxb.ATT.COM (W.PATTERSON) (02/14/89)
The following story is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. A computer repairman was one day called to a grade school to repair their no longer working computer. When he opened up the processor, he found a thick coating of white dust covering every component within, i.e. backplane, mother board and all other PC boards, housing walls, etc. He had never seen any coating like this in any other computer. The repair of the processor involved simply blowing out the dust. A few days later he was on another service call within the school for another computer. Walking by the room that contained the unit he had previously fixed he decided to peek into the room to see how it was doing. What he saw explained the white dust. He saw several boys beating the chalk board erasers next to the fan in the unit, and watching the unit suck the dust inside.
scj@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG (Scotian) (02/14/89)
Ken Bartlett, Net.Caddy writes: |BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! | |Gosh, guys, these are all so very funny! Ha ha, net.humor at its |highest form! Boy, better watch out or Brad'll take 'em! Hey, |Brad, how about a book of these WONDERFULLY FUNNY stories! They're |such a riot! Keep 'em coming! Obviously Ken Bertlett here is some sort of pathetic idiot! He obviously doesn't know of the powers of most used command in rn: the 'k' key. It takes all kinds, I suppose. Perhaps Ken would like to enlighten us with some 'appropriate' humor for rec.humor. Maybe we should have him moderate it! -- .............................................................................. Scott C. Jensen scj@mecc.MN.ORG
jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans) (02/14/89)
From article <1051@vsi.COM>, by friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl): > > #define FATAL 0xFEEDBEEFL /* fatal error, reset system */ Burroughs B6700 mainframes set uninitialized memory to hexadecimal "BADBADBADBAD" (it's a 48-bit machine). When you found this value in your variables (or more likely: in your program dump) you knew what you did wrong ... -- Johan Vromans jv@mh.nl via european backbone (mcvax) Multihouse [A-Za-z ]* [NB]V uucp: ..!mcvax!mh.nl!jv Gouda - The Netherlands phone: +31 1820 62944
dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) (02/14/89)
In article <1259@ccnysci.UUCP> sukenick@ccnysci.UUCP (SYG) writes: >PDP-10 (`Dec System 10', that is :-) DEC's name changes are usually very subtle. The PDP-10 became the DECSystem-10 gradually enough that Computer Abstracts didn't notice, and listed both separately for some years. More recently note the gradual transformation of the VAX-11/xxx into the VAX xxxx. -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi ARPA: bsu-cs!dhesi@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
pcosgro@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Cosgrove) (02/14/89)
In article <1065@wasatch.UUCP> cetron@wasatch.utah.edu.UUCP (Edward J Cetron) writes: >In article <799@n8emr.UUCP> lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden) writes: This reminds me of a Sears washing machine my mother once had. The agitator was unbalanced. It would "walk" itself away from the laundry tubs until it unplugged itself. >
res@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Rich Strebendt) (02/14/89)
In article <1051@vsi.COM>, friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes: | In article <20373@coherent.com>, dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: || Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment || that one can find when reading through source code. | | Finally, us old Gosmacs hackers will recognize the pseudo-famous | comment in display.c by James Gosling, then at CMU: [Comment edited to save a modicum of bandwidth] | ************** | * BEWARE!! * | ************** | All ye who enter here: | Most of the code in this module | is twisted beyond belief! | Tread carefully. | If you think you understand it, | You Don't, | So Look Again. Along this same line, I recall hearing about a comment found in some code for the No. 1 ESS. The instruction set for that telephone switching machine's processor is rich in side effects. Some programmers could write two programs in one -- the one given by the code and the second formed by the side effects of those same instructions. Just after a programmer left to return to school, his boss was scanning the code he had just finished. One instruction in the code did not seem to make any sense, but it was left in the program anyway. It carried a one word comment: SUBTLE Rich Strebendt ...!att!ihlpb!res
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/14/89)
In article <15301@oberon.USC.EDU> gshippen@pollux.usc.edu (Gregory Shippen) writes: >Way back in the stone-age of microprocessors I worked for a small company which >made a TI9900 based machine for dentist offices. ... >very light brown. The drive was filthy. Due to the strange shape of the >drive, we asked the field service guy just where the drive had been. He >explained that the doctor who owned the office had put the entire system >except the terminal in was described to me as "the green-house". Randy Rorden told me about another happening of this kind at the same company, when Greg was not there. They got a disk drive in for repair and the filter was clogged with fine gray abrasive dust. He asked where it had been, and found it had come from an office in Yakima, Wash. At the time of the Mt. St. Helens eruption! haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
kris@beep.UUCP (Port'naybl) (02/14/89)
In article <20373@coherent.com>, dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: > Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment > that one can find when reading through source code. Operating-system > programmers seem particularly prone to witty, shamefaced, or other > slightly-off-center comments in their code. Some years ago I inherited a control-store downloader program that I was told to double the usable word-capacity from the original, which was written in Pascal. The original Pascal version took roughly half an hour to download a 2Kword x 36-bit program; a standing joke was to start it, then take a coffee break. When I tried to re-compile the original, the Pascal compiler said "Semicolon needed on Line XXX"; when I inserted a semicolon where directed to, the compiler would say "Extra semicolon on Line XXX". Arrrgh! I re-wrote the whole thing in C (I think they call it learning under combat conditions). and I figured that the program would take as long as the Pascal version had, so after every ${down!up}load operation, I sent a beep to the terminal with (something close to) the following line: fputc (stdout, 7); /* Awaken User */ Actually, the C version went so fast that I thought that the program didn't do anything except update the terminal screen. -- Port'naybl scooter!beep!kris for (; (all ? 1) && (1 ? all); ) { }
d85-kai@nada.kth.se (Kai-Mikael J{{-Aro) (02/14/89)
The course in Interactive Programming Environments contains a massive programming project on the Macintosh. Various people from different institutions are invited to wish a program they'd want done and we get to do it. Invariably they wish for something that has never been done before, so the programming process is often very painful and involves squeezing every bit of capacity out of the Mac. It is very common to find new and unheard-of bugs in MPW, MacApp (aka FuckUpp), and anything else we have to use. So, when an axe was suspended on the wall of the computer room (so we'd be able to knock out a window and escape in case of fire) it didn't take more than a couple of hours before it was adorned with the sign: "MPW DEBUGGER 2.0"
flynn@pixel.cps.msu.edu (Patrick J. Flynn) (02/14/89)
In article <37@xenlink.UUCP> deraadt@xenlink.UUCP (Theo A. DeRaadt) writes: > >Anyone know the story wherein someone managed to lock the parking >brakes on a vertically mounted drum? That's the one where the drum >(supposidly) went through the wall... >Anyone know it? There is a related story about the first naval vessels to use computers. The storage medium was drum memory, and some officers underestimated the gyroscopic properties of large, massive, rapidly rotating cylinders when they executed course changes. Officer: Hard to Port! Helmsman: Aye aye, sir! Drum: *SMASH!!!* p
BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Barbara Vaughan) (02/15/89)
>] >>I had to >] >>write a routine to read all keyboard input as characters. >] >>to numbers, and add a friendly message to explain what a number was. >] > >] >Even if you're not dealing with "MBA types", you should always do this >] >in any serious program. >] > >] This was the early 1970's... most input was still on punched cards. >] My program was pretty advanced for its time. (paraphrase) > >Well, how did the non-numeric field ever get past the program on the >keypunch drum card??? (-: I said most input was still on punched cards. My task was to add a interface to an existing FORTRAN program so that it could be run by non-computer professionals on paleolithic terminals. If I remember correctly, we had two types: The old noisy teletype things that printed on what looked like a roll of bad paper towels, and the portable TI terminals that printed on heat-sensitive paper and had a telephone coupler. There were no screens then. I worked for a large management consulting firm. The program I was modifying was used by local offices throughout the U.S. People used to fill out a keypunch form and mail it to the New York office, where we would keypunch it, run the program and mail back the output. My user interface allowed them to dial the New York number of a time-sharing vendor (another idea in its infancy then), log into our account, answer the questions posed by the user interface, and get the results typed out immediately on their paper towel or whatever. This was considered truly revolutionary and impressed the clients no end. This is beside the point, but the time-sharing vendor used to print log-on messages; at least twice a week they would have a message that began:"Attention London users:". I was convinced that these were phony messages to impress on their other users that they had a London office.
jbe@cci632.UUCP ( co-op) (02/15/89)
In article <3547@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM> terryl@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM writes: >In article <1357@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> aem@Mthvax.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) writes: >>In <4744@sfsup.UUCP>, <saal@/doc/dsg/saalUUCP> wrote: >>>I heard of someone that put a computer in >>>the microwave to dry it off. I think >>>one of them, either the microwave or the >>>person that did it, exploded. >> >>It was a poodle, not a computer. >> Although these stories are legion, I saw first hand someone put a pair of socks in the microwave at the airport to try and dry them after a rainstorm. Needless to say, they came out somewhat melted and black. ob joke (Heard at Yuk Yuks) It is really nice to see more women getting into aviation, particularly as pilots. However, in the interests of equality a few things are going to have to be renamed. The question that is really plaguing me is, what are we going to rename the cockpit? My friend promptly pointed out that the ejection seat is going to be at least as much of a problem.
ekberg@home.csc.ti.com (Tom Ekberg) (02/15/89)
My favorite comes from the DEC IAS/RSX-11D Device Handlers Reference Manual (Order No DEC-11-OIHRA-A-D) for IAS Version 2 (RSX-11D Version 6B (Version 6.1)) dated 1975. In appendix A, page 3 in the category titled `NETWORK ACP CODES' you will find the following line: .IOER. IE.NFW,-69.,<PATH LOST TO PARTNER> ;+001 THIS CODE MUST BE ODD When DEC came out with VMS, they stopped numbering their error messages. -- tom (aisle C-4L), ekberg@csc.ti.com
bobd@ihf1.UUCP (Bob Dietrich) (02/15/89)
In the early 70's I took care of a PDP-15 for a department at the university. It was an interesting machine: half a PDP-10 (18-bit words), faster than most early PDP-11's, but the hardware and instruction set had a strong PDP-8 influence. It even had two different buses, one of which you could hang PDP-8 peripherals on. About 750 of them were sold. The machine was fairly reliable (except for smoking power transistors on the DECtape drives every month), but at one point the main power supply started failing intermittently. Since we weren't on service contract, it was going to take a while for DEC to come out and fix the machine. So they gave us a procedure to follow so we could limp along in the meantime. The fix? Go to the back of the cabinet, second door from the right. Locate an imaginary spot about 18 inches from the floor. Now kick, but not hard enough to dent the sheet metal. This would allow the system to run for another 15 to 30 minutes before it crashed again. Turns out there was a mercury filled relay in the power supply. Kicking the cabinet make things vibrate enough to make the power supply turn on again for a while. We were glad when DEC arrived, although some people didn't get as much satisfaction running their programs after the real fix. Now you know why I prefer to keep my PC on the floor. ;-) usenet: uunet!littlei!intelhf!ihf1!bobd Bob Dietrich or tektronix!ogccse!omepd!ihf1!bobd Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon or tektronix!psu-cs!omepd!ihf1!bobd (503) 696-2092
cc1@valhalla.cs.ucla.edu (Ken, you nimrod) (02/15/89)
In article <1280@sw1e.UUCP> uucibg@sw1e.UUCP (Brian Gilstrap [5-3929]) writes: ^In article <20324@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> cc1@cs.ucla.edu (Ken Bartlett, Net.Caddy) writes: ^>I have a very funny computer anecdote to share! ^[fake computer story in generally poor taste] ^>----====----====----====----====----====----====----====----====----====---- ^>cc1@cs.ucla.edu Ken Bartlett izzy947@oac.ucla.edu ^> "Yes indeed, computer folklore--humor in its highest form." ^>====----====----====----====----====----====----====----====----====----==== ^I find it interesting that you seem to be the *only* person so far who has ^complained about the cross-posting. Do you truly feel that you have the right ^to impose your value system upon the rest of the net? Next time, please try ^reason before a tirade. Okay, sorry. I screwed up. --Ken
cc1@valhalla.cs.ucla.edu (Ken, you nimrod) (02/15/89)
In article <1286@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG> scj@meccsd.mecc.mn.org (Scotian) writes: ^Ken Bartlett, Net.Caddy writes: ^|BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ^Obviously Ken Bertlett here is some sort of pathetic idiot! ^ Obviously. Okay, already guys--I SCREWED UP, okay? ^Perhaps Ken would like to enlighten us ^with some 'appropriate' humor for rec.humor. Something funny? ^Maybe we should have him ^moderate it! No thanks. --Ken
woody@pawl.rpi.edu (Chris A. Widmann) (02/15/89)
Quite a while back (approx 8 years) I was an 8th grader at a typical
suburban middle school. A few friends and I would venture I way up to the
high school where we would learn Basic through a printing terminal (old DEC
with about 135 cols) that was hooked up to a 110 baud dedicated line to a
time sharing system somewhere in Albany, NY.
We always had trouble with another HS's tricks of erasing our files,
(the system was riddled with holes) and we constantly complained to the
system administrator about it. He did nothing. We discussed the possibilities
or revenge upon that school, with our teacher, but he said, "NO".. So, this
erasal and complaining to the system administrator carried on for about another
month till they erased all our teacher's files...
Our teacher, having enough complaints with the system administrator,
decided that it had gone too far. He told us to take care of the problem. So,
being rather "conservative" we deleted one of their files (the biggest we
could find) and about 4 hours latter, the system administrator calls
complaining about all the computer misuse we had been participating in. What
had happened, we had deleted the master file of all the combination locks
in that HS. They had no other copy, and nothing on hardcopy. Picture HS
janitors (sorry, custodial engineers) opening approximately 2000 combination
locks with keys to get the combo's...
Well, the consequences of our actions weren't that humorous. The
School district (after having seen War Games) pulled the lines in fear that
we might do something worse, and the other school pulled all it's systems in
fear of losing more data. Then our school went out and splurged on two
Trash-80 Model 1's with 16K each, and a cassette drive,but that is
another story.....
Chris Widmann (Woody) "It is a dog eat dog world out there
Internet: woody@pawl.rpi.edu and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear."
woody@uruguay.acm.rpi.edu
WWIVnet : 1@5853 ntitley@zaphod.axion.bt.co.uk (nigel titley) (02/15/89)
From article <911@mailrus.cc.umich.edu>, by shane@chablis.cc.umich.edu (Shane Looker): > In article <1373@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> aem@Mthvax.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) writes: > > That (in turn) reminds me of the early 6502 chips (used by the Commodore > PET). Supposedly, some of the first series used in the PET had an > actual HACF (Halt and Catch Fire) instruction. I've been told that > one instruction would cause all the pins to fire at once, thus burning > out the chip. This was actually true of the early 6800s (not 6502) which had some unassigned OP Codes. If you tried to execute one of these instructions the chip went into a tight microcode loop which overheated a small section of the microcode ROM. It was this that burned out the chip. Nigel Titley Email: NTitley@axion.bt.co.uk Snail: British Telecom Research labs, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK "Well, I'm disenchanted too. We're all disenchanted." (James Thurber)
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (02/15/89)
In article <2877@mhres.mh.nl>, jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans) writes: > Burroughs B6700 mainframes set uninitialized memory to hexadecimal > "BADBADBADBAD" (it's a 48-bit machine). When you found this value in > your variables (or more likely: in your program dump) you knew > what you did wrong ... On our Xenix box, at least, the disk blocks get initialised by the format program to DEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEAD... -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Work: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. `-_-' Home: bigtex!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.uu.net. 'U` Opinions may not represent the policies of FICC or the Xenix Support group.
chas@gtss.gatech.edu (Charles Cleveland) (02/15/89)
I have been skipping a lot of these Computer Folklore postings, so if the
following has been already posted recently, forgive me and move on.
This is a repost. I got it a year or two ago. But since interest in this
topic seems high and since the included article is such a classic, I thought
I'd go ahead and repost it anyway. As for sources, check the end of the
article; only the last .signature (which makes some reference to
civilization) is mine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A little story:
A recent article devoted to the *macho* side of programming
made the bald and unvarnished statement:
Real Programmers write in Fortran.
Maybe they do now,
in this decadent era of
Lite beer, hand calculators and "user-friendly" software
but back in the Good Old Days,
when the term "software" sounded funny
and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
Not Fortran. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language.
Machine Code.
Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
Directly.
Lest a whole new generation of programmers
grow up in ignorance of this glorious past,
I feel duty-bound to describe,
as best I can through the generation gap,
how a Real Programmer wrote code.
I'll call him Mel,
because that was his name.
I first met Mel when I went to work for Royal McBee Computer Corp.,
a now-defunct subsidiary of the typewriter company.
The firm manufactured the LGP-30,
a small, cheap (by the standards of the day)
drum-memory computer,
and had just started to manufacture
the RPC-4000, a much-improved,
bigger, better, faster -- drum-memory computer.
Cores cost too much,
and weren't here to stay, anyway.
(That's why you haven't heard of the company, or the computer.)
I had been hired to write a Fortran compiler
for this new marvel and Mel was my guide to its wonders.
Mel didn't approve of compilers.
"If a program can't rewrite its own code,"
he asked, "what good is it?"
Mel had written,
in hexadecimal,
the most popular computer program the company owned.
It ran on the LGP-30
and played blackjack with potential customers
at computer shows.
Its effect was always dramatic.
The LGP-30 booth was packed at every show,
and the IBM salesmen stood around
talking to each other.
Whether or not this actually sold computers
was a question we never discussed.
Mel's job was to re-write
the blackjack program for the RPC-4000.
(Port? What does that mean?)
The new computer had a one-plus-one
addressing scheme,
in which each machine instruction,
in addition to the operation code
and the address of the needed operand,
had a second address that indicated where, on the revolving drum,
the next instruction was located.
In modern parlance,
every single instruction was followed by a GO TO!
Put *that* in Pascal's pipe and smoke it.
Mel loved the RPC-4000
because he could optimize his code:
that is, locate instructions on the drum
so that just as one finished its job,
the next would be just arriving at the "read head"
and available for immediate execution.
There was a program to do that job,
an "optimizing assembler",
but Mel refused to use it.
"You never know where its going to put things",
he explained, "so you'd have to use separate constants".
It was a long time before I understood that remark.
Since Mel knew the numerical value
of every operation code,
and assigned his own drum addresses,
every instruction he wrote could also be considered
a numerical constant.
He could pick up an earlier "add" instruction, say,
and multiply by it,
if it had the right numeric value.
His code was not easy for someone else to modify.
I compared Mel's hand-optimized programs
with the same code massaged by the optimizing assembler program,
and Mel's always ran faster.
That was because the "top-down" method of program design
hadn't been invented yet,
and Mel wouldn't have used it anyway.
He wrote the innermost parts of his program loops first,
so they would get first choice
of the optimum address locations on the drum.
The optimizing assembler wasn't smart enough to do it that way.
Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either,
even when the balky Flexowriter
required a delay between output characters to work right.
He just located instructions on the drum
so each successive one was just *past* the read head
when it was needed;
the drum had to execute another complete revolution
to find the next instruction.
He coined an unforgettable term for this procedure.
Although "optimum" is an absolute term,
like "unique", it became common verbal practice
to make it relative:
"not quite optimum" or "less optimum"
or "not very optimum".
Mel called the maximum time-delay locations
the "most pessimum".
After he finished the blackjack program
and got it to run,
("Even the initializer is optimized",
he said proudly)
he got a Change Request from the sales department.
The program used an elegant (optimized)
random number generator
to shuffle the "cards" and deal from the "deck",
and some of the salesmen felt it was too fair,
since sometimes the customers lost.
They wanted Mel to modify the program
so, at the setting of a sense switch on the console,
they could change the odds and let the customer win.
Mel balked.
He felt this was patently dishonest,
which it was,
and that it impinged on his personal integrity as a programmer,
which it did,
so he refused to do it.
The Head Salesman talked to Mel,
as did the Big Boss and, at the boss's urging,
a few Fellow Programmers.
Mel finally gave in and wrote the code,
but he got the test backwards,
and, when the sense switch was turned on,
the program would cheat, winning every time.
Mel was delighted with this,
claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical,
and adamantly refused to fix it.
After Mel had left the company for greener pa$ture$,
the Big Boss asked me to look at the code
and see if I could find the test and reverse it.
Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to look.
Tracking Mel's code was a real adventure.
I have often felt that programming is an art form,
whose real value can only be appreciated
by another versed in the same arcane art;
there are lovely gems and brilliant coups
hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever,
by the very nature of the process.
You can learn a lot about an individual
just by reading through his code,
even in hexadecimal.
Mel was, I think, an unsung genius.
Perhaps my greatest shock came
when I found an innocent loop that had no test in it.
No test. *None*.
Common sense said it had to be a closed loop,
where the program would circle, forever, endlessly.
Program control passed right through it, however,
and safely out the other side.
It took me two weeks to figure it out.
The RPC-4000 computer had a really modern facility
called an index register.
It allowed the programmer to write a program loop
that used an indexed instruction inside;
each time through,
the number in the index register
was added to the address of that instruction,
so it would refer
to the next datum in a series.
He had only to increment the index register
each time through.
Mel never used it.
Instead, he would pull the instruction into a machine register,
add one to its address,
and store it back.
He would then execute the modified instruction
right from the register.
The loop was written so this additional execution time
was taken into account --
just as this instruction finished,
the next one was right under the drum's read head,
ready to go.
But the loop had no test in it.
The vital clue came when I noticed
the index register bit,
the bit that lay between the address
and the operation code in the instruction word,
was turned on--
yet Mel never used the index register,
leaving it zero all the time.
When the light went on it nearly blinded me.
He had located the data he was working on
near the top of memory --
the largest locations the instructions could address --
so, after the last datum was handled,
incrementing the instruction address
would make it overflow.
The carry would add one to the
operation code, changing it to the next one in the instruction set:
a jump instruction.
Sure enough, the next program instruction was
in address location zero,
and the program went happily on its way.
I haven't kept in touch with Mel,
so I don't know if he ever gave in to the flood of
change that has washed over programming techniques
since those long-gone days.
I like to think he didn't.
In any event,
I was impressed enough that I quit looking for the
offending test,
telling the Big Boss I couldn't find it.
He didn't seem surprised.
When I left the company,
the blackjack program would still cheat
if you turned on the right sense switch,
and I think that's how it should be.
I didn't feel comfortable
hacking up the code of a Real Programmer."
-- Source: usenet: utastro!nather, May 21, 1983.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sean Philip Engelson
Carnegie-Mellon University
Computer Science Department
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ARPA: spe@cad.cs.cmu.edu
UUCP: {harvard | seismo | ucbvax}!cad.cs.cmu.edu!spe
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: Nothing in the above article has the slightest relationship
to reality. If any reality correspondences are found,
please notify me IMMEDIATELY.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
- It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be -
- coming up it. -- Henry Allen -
Charles Cleveland Georgia Tech School of Physics Atlanta, GA 30332-0430
UUCP: ...!gatech!gtss!chas INTERNET: chas@gtss.gatech.edumerle@felix.UUCP (Linda Merle) (02/15/89)
I am reminded of a vendor of mine at a company running Regulus (a real time Unix that used a variant file system. Instead of inode lists and lists of blocks for data (or bit maps, for that matter), it used a single free list for all blocks, inode and otherwise.). One dreary day this fella reported that he'd gotten an fsck error that morning in block 4 of his file system. Fsck asked him if he wanted it "fixed". He said say, so it did. It placed everything past the superblock plus one into the free space list. "Bummer", said I, "It's restore-time! You shoulda said 'no' and we could have tried to fix the damage with our ever-handy fsdb!". But alas, he had been coding for a week and neglected to make a backup. He called back a week later, having spent the entire week reassembling his file system 512 by 512 block by using fsdb to relink the un-zero'ed blocks in the free space list. Every 20 or so the block had been re-used to contain the free space list itself; these he lost, but for the most part, he did it. Linda Merle -- ====================================================================== "If men are God's gift to women.... He's really into gag gifts!" ======================================================================
dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Dennis L. Mumaugh) (02/15/89)
In article <530@tcsc3b2.UUCP> tcsc@tcsc3b2.UUCP (The Computer Solution Co.) writes: >There, on top of one of the trays of mail was a label with the >converted alumni record identifier. It read something like ... > > ------------------------------- > | 123FUCK69A4 MM 43210** | > | MISS INGRID BEASLEY EDU. 29 | > | ... | > >Thereafter, we were instructed to add the "DIRTY-WORD-ROUTINE" >which performed a table lookup of every word which a committee of >about a dozen of the raunchiest people in the department could >come up with. At the UoMd the computer center designed a new "fortran" compiler that had all of the "Features" of the Univac Fortran V and all of the features of MAD (Michigan Alogrithm Decoder). This included zero array subscripting, alpha-numeric labels and other goodies. I was decided to add a routine to censor the variables one could use. It was called CUSS for something like Committee on Utilization of SymbolS. It would give a diagnostic when it encountered the obscene symbol used and then continue as if the symbol hadn't been defined. One day a proferssor was using the system under demand mode (similar to time sharing but not quite) and had typed in a program and gotten the usual vomit from the terminal. In exasperation the professor (who was in immediate compile mode) typed: GOTO HELL <Warning> HELL is not a suitable variable for use <Fatal> HELL is not defined. Shortly thereafter CUSS was removed. -- =Dennis L. Mumaugh Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.com
master@uop.edu (Nasser Al-Ismaily) (02/15/89)
In article <2967@homxb.ATT.COM>, wwp@homxb.ATT.COM (W.PATTERSON) writes: > The following story is true. The names have been changed to protect > the innocent. and the guilty! What do you get when you cross a JAP with an Apple? A computer that never goes down.
daveM@cup.portal.com (Dave L Maddox) (02/15/89)
Re printers tearing their own paper... A fairly high speed DEC printer from the earlier part of the decade kept tension on the paper using two sets of tractors - one above the hammers, and one below. The one above constantly pulled on the paper, and the one below allowed the paper to travel at the appropriate rate. Woe be to him who released the paper from the bottom tractors! Half the box would pass in the blink of an eye... Now there was a printer just *begging* for the underscore - perforation trick!
carl@aoa.UUCP (Carl Witthoft) (02/15/89)
In article <82736@felix.UUCP> merle@felix.UUCP (Linda Merle) writes: >linda >====================================================================== > >"If men are God's gift to women.... > He's really into gag gifts!" > ^^^ >====================================================================== I don't suppose you meant any double entendre of the oral variety there.....????? :=) -- Alix' Dad ( Carl Witthoft @ Adaptive Optics Associates) " Axis-navigo, ergo sum." {harvard,ima}!bbn!aoa!carl 54 CambridgePark Drive, Cambridge,MA 02140 617-864-0201 "disclaimer? I'm not a doctor, but I do have a Master's Degree in Science!"
mrm@sceard.UUCP (M.R.Murphy) (02/15/89)
Story 1)
There once was a PDP-11/40 with 2 magtapes, 2 expansion boxes, and the
cpu cabinet. It was pretty wide for a PDP-11 and even looked like a computer.
It lived in a lab at a university. A group of students from the Film(Fine Arts)
Department wanted to make a movie. Of a computer burning... They arranged for
access to said PDP-11/40 and set up to film. They used a CO2 fire extinguisher
to simulate smoke coming out of the computer. Tapes spinning, lights flashing,
smoke everywhere. It turned out to be a dry powder fire extinguisher. PDP-11/40
worked fine later after distilled water rinse-down and drying.
Story 2)
Same lab, different computer (PDP-12). Cabinet open and C.E.(customer engineer)
performing P.M.(preventative maint.). Bystanding student researcher eating
peanut butter with fork directly out of jar peering over shoulder of C.E.
Student drops fully laden fork into live backplane causing fork to heat,
peanut butter to flow, smoke smelling of roasted peanuts to billow, and
backplane to fry.
Should these postings still be going to rec.humor and comp.misc?
Just asking.
--
Mike Murphy Sceard Systems, Inc. 544 South Pacific St. San Marcos, CA 92069
mrm@sceard.UUCP {hp-sdd,nosc,ucsd}!sceard!mrm +1 619 471 0655kevinf@cognos.uucp (Kevin Ferguson) (02/16/89)
Many moons ago (1982), I was on contract as a P/A to one of those credit card companies that shall remain nameless. I was attached to the project that was completely rewriting the billing process. The approved implementation included a massive number of database tables that the Credit Department would maintain to control thier billing cycles, appearance of the statement for different types of customers, interest charge calculation, and so on, ad nauseam. Well, as the project trundled on toward completion, the end user became aware of the manpower effort that would be required to initialize all of these tables. (In retrospect, their reaction was really quite excessive.) Our illustrious Project Manager said at the time, "No problem. We'll just promote the TestBed environment." I'm sure that you can imagine our reaction, as the mischevious minds of programmers tend to generate humourous testing environments. Sure enough, despite all of the programmers and testers objections, the TestBed environment was promoted to Production "... with those changes that are deemed necessary by the Credit Department." Apparently, they did not catch all of the "necessary changes" because in the first week, the Credit Department mailed 1,500 statements to delinquent customers with the Reminder Notice: "Pay up, or we'll rape your wife." Judging by the memo that was distributed to the MIS Department following this debacle, the rest of the organization failed to see the humour in this. ---- "Don't Worry. Be Happy." -- Kevin Ferguson FAX: (613) 738-0002 S-mail: P.O. Box 9707 Cognos Incorporated Voice: (613) 738-1338 x5203 3755 Riverside Drive UUCP: kevinf@cognos.UUCP | uunet!mitel!sce!cognos!kevinf Ottawa, Ontario ICBM: 45 21N 75 41W 375'ASL CANADA K1G 3Z4
ssd@sugar.uu.net (Scott Denham) (02/16/89)
Along the lines of computer technician horror stories, I shall always remember an incident that occured a number of years ago when I was the night shift supervisor at a site using a big IBM 370/165 system. We had recently added a whole MEG of "brand X" memory (the size of a walk-in freezer!!) and were having gobs of trouble with it. One very tired, semi-competent tech was on-site trying to fix it. I was twiddling my thumbs wondering if I should send my guys home, having already cleaned all the tape drives 4 times and swept the floor twice. I go back by the processor where this guy is working, and find him with 6-8 big RAM boards spread out on the floor. He's sitting on a box with a board in his lap, soldering a chip in. His soldering iron builds up a nice excess glob of molten solder, and he nonchalantly flips it off with a jerk of his wrist.... DIRECTLY AT THE PILE OF RAM CARDS SPREAD OUT ON THE FLOOR!!!! I sent the crew home, we were still down when I got back the next night, and the lease on that box memory box was *NOT* renewed!!!!!
ssd@sugar.uu.net (Scott Denham) (02/16/89)
In article <7090@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>, linimon@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Mark Linimon) writes: > In article <799@n8emr.UUCP>, lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden) writes: > > I was at a DECUS > > conference about 6 yrs ago when a system programmer was laughing about > > programming a Dec machine to seek around on a disk drive enough to cause the > > cabinet to rock. > I saw either this incident or a similar one -- firsthand. PDP-11/20, Ampex > add-on disk, "custom" (phew) controller, 1973. Some late-night programming > bums had tortured the diagnostic program to "full seek at switch register > speed." After that a quick binary search produced the resonant frequency > of the machine. At one point the electronics in the disk had crashed I did something similar (inadvertently) on and IBM 360/44 with 2314 disks These were nasty, unreliable beasts, and we had a *terrible* problem with seek errors. One of the engineers decided we might be able to cure the problem by using a different type of oil in the head-actuator assebly; it had some sort of oil-filled damper in it. I wrote a program that alternately did random seeks across the whole pack as fast as possible along with some "shaking" to attempt to heat things up. We finally came up with something that worked - and the program could be made to run for long periods of time. For grins, somebody left it running all night one Sunday night, and while the operator was either napping or out with his girlfriend, 2 of the spare disk packs that had been sitting on TOP of the disk cabinet walked off and took a quick 5 foot leap to the floor. One survived.....the operations manager was not to happy about the other one, which happened to contian a month's machine accounting data!!!! This same program, resurrected some years later for exercising some Memorex "washing machine" drives didn't do anything quite that drastic, but did manage to make 'em walk enough so a gap appeared between two adjacent cabinets.
rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) (02/16/89)
Last year, I was invovled in the installation of a Novell Network for CMU's GSIA Department of External Affairs -- ie, the "soak the alumni for money" people. [GSIA: Graduate School of Industrial Administration. End Aside] Their database, in an obscure language/program that I never heard of (and can't remember) existed solely on the hard drive of the IBM Model 60 that was to become the file server -- naturally, it was the only machine in the office with 3.5" disks (the rest were IBM XT's) and without a 5.25" port. So, I asked to see their backup disks and original system disks before I did anything. Now, it seems that the company had been down a few months before, and taken the system disks back with them. The next time the department secretary went to Boston for training, they gave her copies of the disks. Or so they said. Funny thing was that the disks were hand-lettered "MacPaint". And it was a bootleg copy of MacPaint! I made two sets of backups of the database before I did anything (and successfully re-loaded them later), but as of the last I heard, they've NEVER gotten a copy of the program back from the company. However, they were TOLD to return the MacPaint disks! (Like, how the hell can you use MacPaint on a Model 60 running PC-DOS 3.3? Inquiring minds want to know...)
lewis@cg-atla.UUCP (Paul Lewis) (02/16/89)
I heard one about a rail-mounted tape changer that went wild, in Canberra,
Australia. Seems a mainframe (CDC?) site got a new system that would store
9-track reel-to-reel tapes in large racks. There was a tape changing "robot"
that ran on rails that would, on command from the OS, go down the rail to
the correct spot, grab the correct tape off the rack, return to the tape
drive and mount the tape.
The first story concerns installation problems: The rails came in set
lengths: a modular approach. When installing, the engineers told the system
it had one too many rail lengths. So on first try, the robot roared down the
track, smashed against the end stop, backed up, tried again, ...you get the
picture.
The other story takes place after the system was installed. They insalled a
glass wall at the end of the rail to show visitors the new-fangled gadget.
Just when a visitor had his nose up to the glass, the operators would send
the tape changer at top speed to the end of the rail. The poor visitor
couldn't tell whether it was going to stop or not, so they had a few good
laughs at that.
--
Paul Lewis 508-658-0200 x5713
Agfa Compugraphic Division, AGFA CORPORATION
200 Ballardvale St., Wilmington, Mass. 01887
...!{decvax,ima,ism780c,ulowell,laidback,cgeuro,cg-f}!cg-atla!lewisbeb@mit-amt (Brian E Bradley) (02/16/89)
As many of you probably know, there is a nationally-franchised chain of gunnery practice ranges called "Bulletstop". Patrons can bring their own weapons, or can rent from a large and tasteful selection of shootin' irons, including Uzis, for reasonable hourly rates. The outstanding feature of these shooting galleries is that you can bring in ANYTHING YOU WANT as targets. Popular objects for liquidation include personal computers, faulty disc drives, impenetrable documentation, and all those other things which frustrate or annoy. I've been to one in Colorado. It's an excellent concept, well implemented: much needed in urban areas. Of course, we'll NEVER see one here in the Kennedy state... despite the potentially enormous M.I.T./Harvard business...
rfm@sun.com (Rich McAllister) (02/16/89)
The FORTRAN IV compiler for the SDS/XDS Sigma 7 would, when presented
a legal program containing:
ASSIGN 700 TO JAIL
...
GO TO JAIL
...
700 CONTINUE
would emit the following diagnostic for the GO TO statement:
WARNING: DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200
Rich McAllister (rfm@sun.com)steved@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Steve Dempsey) (02/16/89)
In article <3438@sugar.uu.net> ssd@sugar.uu.net (Scott Denham) writes: > [stuff about resonant-seek program to make drives walk deleted] > >This same program, resurrected some years later for exercising some >Memorex "washing machine" drives didn't do anything quite that drastic, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >but did manage to make 'em walk enough so a gap appeared between two >adjacent cabinets. Speaking of household appliances, we have some STC drives with rather plain cabinets. Someone created a few sticky-backed labels with the Maytag name & logo. Every once in a while some non technical people will get the $2 tour of our facilities, and one of them might say `Gee whiz, I didn't know Maytag makes computer equipment'. I usually 'fess up and let them in on the joke, but sometimes not. Steve Dempsey, Center for Computer Assisted Engineering Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523 +1 303 491 0630 INET: steved@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu, dempsey@handel.CS.ColoState.Edu UUCP: boulder!ccncsu!longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu!steved, ...!ncar!handel!dempsey
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/16/89)
One version of the operating system for the late Burroughs 5500 had a
procedure named OLDWEIRDHAROLD
Both versions had an array for multiprogramming, called the FORK QUEUE
and a procedure FORKQUE to operate on it.
haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu
haynes@ucscc.bitnet
..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes
"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chroniclegreim@sbsvax.UUCP (Michael Greim) (02/16/89)
In article <11740@reed.UUCP>, indigo@reed.UUCP (Seven Chinese Brothers) writes: > > My friend's kid once spilled coke on his father's keyboard. When the father > called a Digital repairman, he was told to put it in a dish washer. He did, > and it worked perfectly after that.... > > --Hiroshi They must have improved their design. Some years ago I spilled coke on a digital lineprinter with keyboard, er ... what is it called, ... L100 or something. We cleaned the board with alcohol but all we got was strange characters when we hit a key. (The following text already appeared in comp.misc under "computer follies" as 627@sbsvax.UUCP. The system in question is UNIX'ish) Once upon a time a guy from another department came into our room and complained : "Our machine is totally broken. It doesn't do anything." Well, we had a look, and indeed the machine did not even boot. I don't remember the exact error message, but it was one which we had not seen previously. We asked him : "What have you done to the system?" We let him describe his last actions. And finally truth was uncovered: he said: "I was looking for some place on the root file system. I discovered two large files and threw them away. But I did not notice anything strange happen after that." "What was their name?" "Aeh, sinix and vmsinix." (variant of (vm)unix for this machine) Well, we were able to help him with a copy of ours. -mg -- email : greim@sbsvax.informatik.uni-saarland.dbp.de (some mailers might not like this. Then use greim@sbsvax.uucp) or : ...!uunet!unido!sbsvax!greim # include <disclaimers/std.h>
alan@vicorp.UUCP (Alan Morse) (02/17/89)
About 15 years ago I took an introductory programming course, and one of our first assignments was to write a fortran program to print a multiplication table. The assignment handout had an example of the output, and said that students should turn in hardcopy that matched the example. While I was working on my terminal (hardcopy, this was before glass terminals) I noticed that another student working next to me was having a lot of trouble. When I offered to help, she said, "I can't seem to type this table without making a mistake, and if I make a mistake, the output won't match the example in the handout." She didn't realize that she was supposed to write a program to generate the output, and was trying to type it by hand.
cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (02/17/89)
In article <1051@vsi.COM>, friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes: > In article <20373@coherent.com>, dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: > > Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment > > that one can find when reading through source code. > > I've got three: > > The 3B2 defines a couple of magic numbers used by the firmware > to keep track of system state. <sys/firmware.h> defines some > of them to be: > > #define FATAL 0xFEEDBEEFL /* fatal error, reset system */ > #define VECTOR 0xA11C0DEDL /* reset goes to rst_handler */ > #define REBOOT 0x8BADF00DL /* reboot w/o diags for UN*X */ > #define REENTRY 0xADEBAC1EL /* reenter fw from a reset w/o failure mesage */ > Stephen J. Friedl 3B2-kind-of-guy friedl@vsi.com Many years ago, in high school, I learned about systems programming on a timesharing Interdata Model 15. (Yes, this is rather equivalent to multiple terminals timesharing a 4004). Certain error conditions would get your attention by trying execute an illegal instruction, where the instruction would be some signif- icant hex constant, which would drop you into the debugger. Parity error: 10FF (read the 0 as the letter "O") Correct debugger level disk I/O: BABE Incorrect debugger level disk I/O: B00B Of course, as we fiddled with this poor little operating system, we added various error conditions, with the obvious hex constant error codes: FECE, F00D, FEED. -- Clayton E. Cramer {pyramid,pixar,tekbspa}!optilink!cramer Disclaimer? You must be kidding! No company would hold opinions like mine!
marc@infmx.UUCP (Marc Kenig) (02/17/89)
In article <411@ontenv.UUCP> soley@ontenv.UUCP (Norman S. Soley) writes: >In article <345@helios.prosys.se>, ath@helios.prosys.se (Anders Thulin) writes: >> >> The DataSAAB D21 computer (RIP) had a loudspeaker attached to one of >> the bits in its `multiplicator register'. This gadget made it possible >> to play tunes by writing suitable programs. One such program I >> . >> . >This is actually a fairly common thing, the Apple II ran (or should I > . > . Bah! What simple ways we have found to produce computer music. In my undergrad days, someone who probably wanted to compute and listen to the radio found that PDP-8's had an tonal way of interfering with radios. You put the radio in front of the panel (which did have blinking lights, yes), and RF from the PDP-8 would make all sorts of booping noises. Well one enterprising programmer figured out how to manipulate the interrupts so the 8's RF produced musical scale notes through the radio.... You guessed it, there was a program which let you use the keyboard to play songs. 3 octaves, one for each row on the kbd, plus sharps and flats on the keys left over. Take that, FCC! Since this was the stone-knive-and-bearskin days of paper tape and ASR-33 tty's, it didn't take long for us to have a drawer full of "tapes" of songs which when played through the tape reader. Bach, Mozart, XMAS carols, etc. P.S. We also had competitions to see who could come up with the most interesting animated light patterns on the console - a wastefull but amusing way to use the PDP-8's one and only interrupt routine :-) Marc "I never metadata I didn't like"
joel@peora.ccur.com (Joel Upchurch) (02/17/89)
In article <391@prles2.UUCP>, laverman@prismab.prl.philips.nl (Bert Laverman) writes: > The machines (colored orange and perfect twins) were > called THT-1 and THT-2. Both were serviced once a week, > and at one time the THT-1 users got a nice surprise... > when after servicing the THT-2 the operater re-booted the > THT-1 as a mistake! > Since then the two have large signs near the control-buttons > telling which is which. I went into the computer room one day to reboot the system I was using. I flipped off the safety switch and was reaching for the INIT button when I realized that something didn't look quite right. The CEs had come in over the weekend and rearranged the computer room. The cabinet for the main development system was sitting where the system I was testing on was Friday! I told the system administrator what (almost) happened and when I came in later the systems had nice big signs labeling them. -- Joel Upchurch/Concurrent Computer Corp/2486 Sand Lake Rd/Orlando, FL 32809 joel@peora.ccur.com {uiucuxc,hoptoad,petsd,ucf-cs}!peora!joel (407)850-1040
galit@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu (Galit P. Elkies) (02/18/89)
>In article <20373@coherent.com> dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: >>Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment >>that one can find when reading through source code. > Oh yes. In a programming class I took last semester, my group handed in a project we were all very proud of, and at the demo we seemed to really impress the ta... Then, after we left, we looked at our hard copy of the code and found the following incriminating comment left over from a month back on one subroutine: /* This is NOT tested at all ! */ :-% oops..... (coincidentally also the name of our program -- Our OPS-5) galit
kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) (02/18/89)
This was not actually true of the 6800's we had. The instruction was to be avoided, because nothing short of cycling power would stop it. It cycled the address bus through all 64k addresses very rapidly and didn't respond to interrupts. The effect was obvious if you had an Altair 680 (is that the right number of zeros? It's been awhile) as we did. There's bunches of folklore about unimplemented opcodes in the 6800, most of it useless. When I think about the 6800, I am not even convinced it is microcoded, because of the weird ways the unimplemented opcodes worked.
robert@island.uu.net (Robert Leyland) (02/18/89)
In article <6375@saturn.ucsc.edu> haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) writes: >One version of the operating system for the late Burroughs 5500 had a >procedure named OLDWEIRDHAROLD > >Both versions had an array for multiprogramming, called the FORK QUEUE >and a procedure FORKQUE to operate on it. >haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu >haynes@ucscc.bitnet >..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes > >"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." > Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle A friend of mine, working in New Zealand on Burroughs 6700 and 6800 systems had a main processing task that had to create a number of sub task for message handling. This was a banking system with hundreds of terminals, all sending transactions to a central system of 3 B6700s (maybe B7700s I forget). Anyway he named this task (of course) MotherForker, and messages would appear on the SPO (system operators console) that said: Mother Forker running. Mother Forker killed. etc... Well one day while the Banks president was conducting a tour of big-wigs through the computer center, yes, the message appeared. The Bank prezzy saw it, kept his cool, and breezed right by the SPO, not allowing the visitors to get a good look, as was his usual mode on these jaunts. Later he got a little warm under the collar, and the message was changed to something less inflammatory. robert... -- Robert Leyland - Island Graphics, 4000 Civic Ctr Dr #400, San Rafael, CA 94903 {uunet|sun}!island!robert - (415) 491-1000 - GEnie: r.leyland - std disclaimers
tom@iconsys.UUCP (Tom Kimpton) (02/18/89)
When we were first porting UN*X to our hardware we often had
crashes that would leave the file system in a state of disarry.
Going through the fsck routine of being asked if we wanted to
clear the file, etc got to be a hassle. So one of the programmers
added a "-y" option to fsck that would print out yes to the
question (so you could see what was going on), automatically
clear the file in question and continue. It was very handy. It
cut reboot times down dramatically. Until the first time "/"
was corrupted:
Directory "/" corrupted, do you wish to remove? YES
Directory "/" removed.
"-y" was removed forthwith.
--
Tom Kimpton UUCP: {uunet,caeco,nrc-ut}!iconsys!tom
Software Development Engineer ARPANET: icon%byuadam.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Icon International, Inc. BITNET: icon%byuadam.bitnet (multi-user acct)
Orem, Utah 84058 PHONE: (801) 225-6888wb8foz@cucstud.UUCP (David Lesher) (02/18/89)
I worked on a multi pieces-part data acq. system called ESCORT III. I shall omit the place names, but this system gobbled up and displayed data from supersonic wind tunnels, along with other expensive-to-run lashups. It consisted of VAXs, 11/34s and Falcolns, all talking to each other in various ways. The VAXs were centrally located, while the PDPs were in each tunnel control room. Now along with the 34's printers, the control room had an error log printer from the VAX. This was a LA-120. One, night during a test, the operator noticed the 120 was not printing correctly. He raised the lid to fix the ribbon. But the VAX chose that momont to "BROADCAST" the latest error. Nobody had bothered to mention that BROADCASTs take place at a high priority. ALL other work, including data gobbling, halted and waited for the operator to finish and return the 120 to on-line status. I think the scream of anguish from the researchers in the room got his attention. In any case, the test had be be restarted, and many explanations given for the $$$$$ involved. MORAL: It's nice that computers are so willing to wait on those slow people, but there are times they should be slightly more independent!
jacka@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Jack C. Armstrong) (02/18/89)
Maybe this should be under 'Real Programmers', a later entry in these notes, but here goes. Many of these details have been fuzzed by the healing effects of time, so if there are any SDS940 gurus about, they may want to correct me. Long, long ago, in a place not far away (SRI, back when it was STANFORD Research Institute), we had an SDS940 in the Artificial Intelligence Group. I think we had production serial #2 or 3 of these beasts, which were an SDS930 with a Berzerkly hacked paging box, and an even more hacked 'time-sharing' OS. Student slave labor being what it is, there was of course no internal documentation available, but after many long hassles, we were given source. It was entirely in assembler, but source code is self documenting, right? I mean, what other reason to program in anything but raw bits? I loaded a major set of OS source on the system and started to look at the comments columns. You guessed it! Blank. Nada. Frustrated, I set up a search of the entire file and found ONE comment. ONE, in thousands of lines of assembly code! The comment was, and I quote: "Note the clever use of the register exchange instruction." As I recall, the 940 had 3 general purpose registers, and there was an all purpose register exchange instruction, with bits set for source or destination of the move. What they had done was to set the bits to move two of the registers into the remaining one simultaneously! Nothing in the hardware manual indicated what would happen if you did this, and the SDS rep on site stated firmly that it would cause an illegal instruction trap. A few minutes with debug proved that, as a completely accidental side effect of the CPU design, moving two registers into the third caused them to be XORed together! Thus the 'clever use.' I've never liked Berkeley students since!
dmt@ptsfa.PacBell.COM (Dave Turner) (02/18/89)
This was told to me by a former supervisor (retired):
In the late 1960's, Pacific Telephone installed a new computer room on the
10th or 11th floor of a new highrise in downtown Los Angeles. The building
was one of the tallest around at that time. Its walls were all glass.
The computer had 20 or 30 tape drives and was to be used for a new system
that would run a transaction system during the day and a batch system at
night. The output from the daytime online system would feed the nighttime
batch system for master file updating. Some of the master file runs would
take hours.
Most of the testing was done during the daytime.
On the first day of production there were the usual problems and the
batch system was running behind schedule.
At dawn when the sun came up it shined through the windows on the tape
drives which immediately went into high speed rewind and unloaded the
tapes.
The sun had shined on the end-of-tape sensors which caused the tapes
to rewind.
After that one of the nightly duties of the graveyard shift supervisor
was to insure that the drapes were closed before the sun came up.
--
Dave Turner 415/542-1299 {att,bellcore,sun,ames,pyramid}!pacbell!dmtdmt@ptsfa.PacBell.COM (Dave Turner) (02/18/89)
Whenever we used to make major changes to our operating system or transaction
processing system we were required to repeat a prior day's business to prove
the the system was ready for production.
Until about 10 years ago, we would do this by copying all the databases and
tapes for a day and run a series of tests on Saturdays. All the production
terminal operators would be at their terminals typing exactly the same things
that they had typed on the day being repeated.
All this was very expensive and error prone. Usually the tests would cause
a crash a few minutes after they started.
On one memorable day in 1976 the test was running very smoothly.
The computer room was filled with onlookers: operations people, systems
programmers, bigshots, vendor representatives, etc.
The console operator was continuously displaying the status of the system.
One common command was to display all the jobs in the system:
$dj 1-999
Everyone was pleased that the test was going so well until around
4 PM when all the jobs suddenly stopped running.
Concern turned to elation when the console operator confessed that he
had mistakenly typed:
$cj 1-999
Which *cancelled* all the jobs in the system!
--
Dave Turner 415/542-1299 {att,bellcore,sun,ames,pyramid}!pacbell!dmtdbell@cup.portal.com (David J Bell) (02/19/89)
In the late 60's, I was working in computer operations, babysitting/feeding
several 360/30's serving as administrative and accounting systems for a large
aerospace corp. Besides the constant jobs of loading mag tapes and emptying
and reloading printers, there were occasional paper tapes to be punched. The
high-speed :{) paper tape drive could be (mechanically) for 5,6,7, or 8-level
paper tapes, although I can't ever remember running anything but 8-level jobs.
When the mag-to-paper tape job was started, one of the operator inputs was
to answer "Is the paper tape punch set for 8-level tape?". Of course, the
answer was invariably "yes". Once in a great while, someone (on another shift,
of course! :{) ) would have left the drive set for fewer rows. Immediately
after the operator would enter "yes" the system would reply "Set the paper
tape punch for 8 levels, dummy!".
Certainly, this was a rude response; more to the point, why didn't the
idiot application programmer *TEST* the U^%$*&)( setting rather than
asking, when it was possible to check it?!?
Davepcosgro@ihlpl.ATT.COM (PHIL COSGROVE) (02/19/89)
In article <83525@felix.UUCP> merle@felix.UUCP (Linda Merle) writes: variant file system. inode lists > free space list. fsdb, etc. > This. . .this is a gag- - -Right? Just a bunch of computer techno-babble that looks right?> Phil Cosgrove, AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
peggy@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Peggy Shambo) (02/19/89)
In article <4688@ptsfa.PacBell.COM> dmt@ptsfa.PacBell.COM (Dave Turner) writes: >The sun had shined on the end-of-tape sensors which caused the tapes >to rewind. > >After that one of the nightly duties of the graveyard shift supervisor >was to insure that the drapes were closed before the sun came up. Wow. Maybe *that* explains things a little differently about the computer center I used to work at. Our computer room was set back from the front of the building, but had floor-to-ceiling windowed wall that looked out onto (or in from) what used to be a big glassed-in lobby. At night (usually at the start of 2nd shift) drapes were pulled inside the computer room. Now, I had been told that it was to prevent snipers being able to see into the place at night. The sun-in-the-morning story sounds more plausible, as there were many tape drives facing towards the windowed wall, and the lobby faced east... perfect for the sun to hit the BOT/EOT sensors. Anyway, the daytime operators had to dressed in a more professional manner, while the off-shift operators (when we had no corporate visitors peering into the "fishbowl") wore just about what we felt like. -- _____________________________________________________________________________ Peg Shambo | Sophisticated Lady, I know. | Ellington/ peggy@ddsw1.mcs.com | You miss the Love you had long ago | Mills/Parish | And when nobody is nigh, you cry. |
amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir) (02/19/89)
Speaking of strange error messages, does anybody remember the message printed by 'rm' on ancient unix (V6) when trying to remove a file whose name begins with '.' : elements of B will give rise to dom B above was actually ^N B ^O which according to /usr/pub/greek should print as beta on tty37 terminals. This message was intended to prevent the user from removing '.' and '..'; however I could never find out what it meant. Any old unix hands out there? -- Amos Shapir amos@nsc.com National Semiconductor (Israel) P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel Tel. +972 52 522261 TWX: 33691, fax: +972-52-558322 34 48 E / 32 10 N (My other cpu is a NS32532)
aem@ibiza.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) (02/20/89)
In <902@infmx.UUCP>, <marc@infmx.UUCP> wrote: >In my undergrad days, someone who probably wanted to compute and listen >to the radio found that PDP-8's had an tonal way of interfering with >radios. You put the radio in front of the panel (which did have >blinking lights, yes), and RF from the PDP-8 would make all sorts of >booping noises. >Well one enterprising programmer figured out how to manipulate the >interrupts so the 8's RF produced musical scale notes through the radio.... >You guessed it, there was a program which let you use the keyboard >to play songs. 3 octaves, one for each row on the kbd, plus sharps >and flats on the keys left over. Take that, FCC! There used to be alot of programs for the TRS-80 that used this same method. Some later ones you would use by a small board with a transistor that oscillated. That's how I added a bell to my OSI C1P - with a transistor attached at some point on the keyboard matrix and feeding a small speaker. aem a.e.mossberg aem@mthvax.miami.edu MIAVAX::AEM (Span) aem@umiami.BITNET (soon) The man who dies rich dies disgraced. - Andrew Carnegie
igb@Fulcrum.BT.CO.UK (Ian G Batten) (02/20/89)
In article <20373@coherent.com>, dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: > Another subclass of computer folklore is the occasional barbed comment > that one can find when reading through source code. Multics Emacs was written and initially maintained by Bernie Greenberg. Most of the source and comments were in Latin (dog and otherwise) and various other foreign, obsolete and sometimes near-Lovecraftian tounges. Not easy hacking. Then Barry Margolin took over. The comments in the history file was along the lines of: ;;; The glorious dawn on a new rosy age! Comments in English! But some of the older function names were superb: "buffer-est-delenda-p", "fenestra-est-delenda-p" and the great "jetez-les-gazongas" (which involed "les-petit-gazongas" and "les-grandes-gazongas"). This last was reputedly equivalent to an outermost catch handler, because Greenberg felt that a throw slamming up against the system "throw can't find catch" handler made a noise like...GA---ZONG!! Perhaps Barmar could confirm/deny... ian -- Ian G Batten, BT Fulcrum - igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk - ...!uunet!ukc!fulcrum!igb
chuck@melmac.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) (02/20/89)
In article <26406@cci632.UUCP> jbe@ccird1.UUCP (Jim Beveridge - co-op) writes: >In article <3547@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM> terryl@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM writes: >>In article <1357@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> aem@Mthvax.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) writes: >>>In <4744@sfsup.UUCP>, <saal@/doc/dsg/saalUUCP> wrote: >>>>I heard of someone that put a computer in >>>>the microwave to dry it off. I think >>>>one of them, either the microwave or the >>>>person that did it, exploded. >>> >>>It was a poodle, not a computer. >>> >Although these stories are legion, I saw first hand someone put a pair >of socks in the microwave at the airport to try and dry them after a >rainstorm. Needless to say, they came out somewhat melted and black. My roommate (Jeff Cox, you out there?!) at Ga Tech tried to hard boil an egg in our microwave, and opened the door just as the egg exploded. A wall of atomized egg came flying out, leaving a stenciled pattern of Jeff Cox on the wall behind him. Absolutely hilarious. Eggs do not like microwaves. Chuck Musciano Advanced Technology Department Harris Corporation (407) 727-6131 ARPA: chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com
rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) (02/21/89)
True Story: I teach several computer classes for the Continuing (ie. Adult) Education Department at the Allegheny Campus, Community College of Allegheny County (YES that's a MOUTHFUL!). Last summer I was teaching an "Introduction to the IBM PC" class, which includes BASIC, Word Perfect (ugh!), Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase III+. I had one older woman in my class who just couldn't seem to get the hang of using a computer. For example, if I said (while working on 1-2-3) "Now type slash (/) for commands, W for Worksheet, C for Columns..." she would try to (two-finger!) type "slash for commands, W for Worksheet, C for Columns..." Either that, or she would sit there with her hands in her lap looking helpless, until her ride (also in the class) came over to do the work for her. (He later told me that she was always like that with her late husband, waiting for him to do everything for her, and that she had been lost since he passed away). (OK, it's rather sad, but it's true) Second true story: Like most universities, Carnegie (No-Hyphen) Mellon has their own way of thinking. Even though I have taken many classes in C and have taught one at CCAC, they insist that I take their "intro" class for computer science, 15-211, Fundamental Structure of Computer Science. (They've given me credit for most of the electives that follow this class & the next one, 15-212 -- but I still have to take them.) A large part of this class concerns programming in C. We can call our functions anything we wish, so long as the names are relative to the program in question. We have to include an error routine. Mine is called hell(). Therefore, the program logic contains the phrase: "On Error, Go To Hell()" I got away with it. So far, at least... -- rjn --
kent@swrinde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) (02/21/89)
In article <7129@pucc.Princeton.EDU> BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes: >That's when I realized what nonquantitative really meant. Even >though FORTRAN IV had no character string handling capability >(You had to declare your characters as INTEGER or REAL), I had to >write a routine to read all keyboard input as characters, convert >to numbers, and add a friendly message to explain what a number was. A few years back I had to write a program in Pascal with 'bullet-proof' input routines for use by office staff with little knowledge of anything other than wordprocessors. Well, I thought I'd be smart & only accept allowable characters to be entered and otherwise beep at them, so I wrote a multi-level keyboard entry routine to which I would send a set of allowable characters for each entry. Well, since my documentation explained this feature, the group I wrote it for decided to test it in their acceptance test. When I received the test report, they noted that my input routines didn't work correctly. Then I noticed in the appendix, a list of the keys that they felt were in error. This list included 'Control + M', 'Control + H', ... etc. (They knew about the control key from their wordprocessors). I tried to explain to them how control sequences work, that I couldn't fix it in software, and that it wouldn't be very desirable to change the terminals to not generate the control sequences, and they finally relented. I really don't think they believed me though. Kent Polk
guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) (02/21/89)
>Speaking of strange error messages, does anybody remember the message >printed by 'rm' on ancient unix (V6) when trying to remove a file whose >name begins with '.' : > > elements of B will give rise to dom > >B above was actually ^N B ^O which according to /usr/pub/greek should >print as beta on tty37 terminals. This message was intended to prevent >the user from removing '.' and '..'; however I could never find out >what it meant. Any old unix hands out there? As I remember the story as told to me by Dennis Ritchie: Somebody was working on some paper; they'd edit it inside "ed", write it out, do a "!eqn xxx | nroff ..." to proofread it (or parts of it), interrupt the printout when they saw something that needed correction, and go back to editing.... At one point, the interrupt caused text saying Values of (beta) will give rise to dom to appear (the interrupt caused some output characters from "nroff" to be discarded). "ed" then printed its "!", indicating that the "!" command had returned. The net result was: Values of (beta) will give rise to dom! which some people thought looked sufficiently ominous that it deserved to become an error message; hence it was added to "rm". (Yes, it was either "Values" or "values"; I don't remember which of those it was in the "rm" message, though, and I didn't ask Dennis which it was in the original story....)
welty@steinmetz.ge.com (richard welty) (02/21/89)
In article <524@ihf1.UUCP> bobd@ihf1.UUCP (Bob Dietrich) writes: >In the early 70's I took care of a PDP-15 for a department at the university. >It was an interesting machine: half a PDP-10 (18-bit words), faster than most >early PDP-11's, but the hardware and instruction set had a strong PDP-8 >influence. more correctly, the pdp-15 was derived from the original series of 18 bit machines beginning with the pdp-1, and the 12 bit pdp machines were derived from the 18 bit machines. richard
dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) (02/21/89)
In article <cY03nNy00XoBI13GMf@andrew.cmu.edu> rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) writes [about Carnegie Mellon]: >A large part of this class concerns programming in C. .. >Therefore, the program logic contains the phrase: > >"On Error, Go To Hell()" And their BASIC programs probably say: REM set up signal handle for errors signal (ON_ERROR, hell); -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi ARPA: bsu-cs!dhesi@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
siegman@sierra.Stanford.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman) (02/21/89)
Re tape drive sense lights: I'm sure I saw a story somewhere (in RISKS?) about a TV crew filming in an important British (?) computer installation. When they were ready to start shooting, they turned on some huge bright lights, and a whole slew of tape drives went wild -- in the middle of running programs -- instantly reversing and demounting/detaching all their tapes.
finkel@TAURUS.BITNET (02/21/89)
Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore Summary: Expires: References: <911@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> <1069@zaphod.axion.bt.co.uk> <7017@fluke. Sender: Reply-To: finkel@virgo.UUCP (Udi Finkelstein) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: Tel-Aviv Univesity Math and CS school, Israel Keywords: In article <7017@fluke.COM> kurt@fluke.BITNET writes: >This was not actually true of the 6800's we had. The instruction was to be >avoided, because nothing short of cycling power would stop it. It cycled >the address bus through all 64k addresses very rapidly and didn't respond to >interrupts. The effect was obvious if you had an Altair 680 (is that the >right number of zeros? It's been awhile) as we did. There's bunches of >folklore about unimplemented opcodes in the 6800, most of it useless. When >I think about the 6800, I am not even convinced it is microcoded, because of >the weird ways the unimplemented opcodes worked. About 5 years ago, I've seen a humorous article about a new '6502 cooprocessor' called the 7801, that has many new 'interesting' instructions such as: Stop for Coffee Break - SCB Branch if Power Off - BPO I don't remember the exact mnnemonics used, but I thin you all got the idea. There were many more 'useful' instructions, but I saw this article years ago, and I forgot most of it. There were about 30 more commands. The article appeared on '6502 & 6809 Journal', but I don't know what date it was. I think that the article may be 7-10 years old by now. I would appreciate it very much if someone who has it could type it in ( if it's not long, as I remember, and if it doesn't violate any copyright ), or at least tell me what issue it was. thanks in advance, udi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Udi Finkelstein | Bitnet: finkel@taurus.bitnet or finkel@math.tau.ac.il Tel Aviv University | Internet: finkel%taurus.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu Israel | UUCP: ...!psuvax1!taurus.bitnet!finkel -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jbe@cci632.UUCP ( co-op) (02/21/89)
In article <1232@raspail.UUCP> bga@raspail.UUCP (Bruce Albrecht) writes: > >When Grinnell College upgraded from a PDP 11/45 to an 11/70, the DEC field >engineer finished the installation and booted the 11/70. It started up, and >15 seconds later, it promptly died. He tried it again, and it failed again. >He called up his superior, who thought about it for a few moments, asked him >if he had removed the loopback plugs on all the serial interface boards. It >seems that RSTS/E sends out a message informing the users that the system is >on its way up, and when the message was sent, the loopback plug turned it >into a user input, to which the system sent a message 'input ignored.', >which also became user input ..., and the system died because it ran out of >free buffers. Seems that people never learn from their mistakes. I had a version of XENIX 286 crash for basically the same reason. I had it hardwired to a large UNIX system, but I booted up XENIX before I disabled the getty on either system. XENIX would send out "System Login: " which UNIX would take as a username and send out "Password: " which XENIX would take as the username, etc etc. It took about ten seconds for the XENIX system to come to a crashing halt. .. Jim ..
amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir) (02/21/89)
[Re: comments in a strange language] My cousin used to work for a British COBOL software house. His first job was to fly to their branch in Brazil to help maintaining a large project; it seems most of it was written by an Israeli who had left the company, leaving behind him a lot of programs whose variable names were all in Hebrew. Using Hebrew words for variable names is a common practice among Israeli COBOL programmers, since that's the only way not to tread on a reserved word... -- Amos Shapir amos@nsc.com National Semiconductor (Israel) P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel Tel. +972 52 522261 TWX: 33691, fax: +972-52-558322 34 48 E / 32 10 N (My other cpu is a NS32532)
pj@hrc63.co.uk (Mr P Johnson "Baddow") (02/21/89)
According to fokelore, a word processor was installed in an office. The boss told the secretary (quoting a magazine article) that she must always make a copy of any disks with important information on. About two weeks later the secretary phoned the maintainance dept and complained that the machine would not read a disk. "OK." said the maintainance man, "put the copy into the disk drive." The secretary tried. "It wont go in." she said. "Well how did you make the copy in the first place?" asked the maintainance man. "With a photocopier. How else do you copy anything?" Another incident occured in a large data-prep office. One of the operators was getting married. The rest of the office clubbed together to buy her a cake. The problem arose of where to put it. Someone suggested the machine room: air conditioned and secure. The cake was duly placed in an empty disk drive away from prying eyes. A couple of hours later a technician walked through the room and saw an apparently inactive but occupied drive. He pressed the start button. The cake started to spin and 16 read/write heads sliced into the disintegrating mass. I got the first story from a friend. The second is related in "DONT (or how to care for your computer)" by R. Zaks. Paul Johnson.
werme@Alliant.COM (Ric Werme) (02/22/89)
In article <6540007@hpcupt1.HP.COM> jacka@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Jack C. Armstrong) writes: >Long, long ago, in a place not far away (SRI, back when it was STANFORD >Research Institute), we had an SDS940 in the Artificial Intelligence Group. >I think we had production serial #2 or 3 of these beasts, which were an SDS930 >with a Berzerkly hacked paging box, and an even more hacked 'time-sharing' OS. )I loaded a major set of OS source on the system and started to look at the )comments columns. You guessed it! Blank. Nada. Frustrated, I set up a )search of the entire file and found ONE comment. ONE, in thousands of lines )of assembly code! ]I've never liked Berkeley students since! I've always figured AT&T didn't bother to comment Unix source because they were all Phds who were above them, but I always wondered when Berkeley people learned to skip comments. One of the nice things about working on TOPS-10 was that I could read a module and learn a lot about how it worked. With Unix, you almost have to start at a system call entry and trace down a routine at a time, no matter how many modules it goes through. Oh well, job security has its advantages. -- | A pride of lions | Eric J Werme | | A gaggle of geese | uucp: decvax!linus!alliant | | An odd lot of programmers | Phone: 603-673-3993 |
barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) (02/22/89)
In article <112@cat.Fulcrum.BT.CO.UK> igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) writes: >Multics Emacs was written and initially maintained by Bernie Greenberg. >Most of the source and comments were in Latin (dog and otherwise) and >various other foreign, obsolete and sometimes near-Lovecraftian tounges. >Not easy hacking. Then Barry Margolin took over. The comments in the >history file was along the lines of: > >;;; The glorious dawn on a new rosy age! Comments in English! Actually, Richard Soley was there for a little while between Bernie and me, and that one was his. In actual fact, most of the comments in Emacs (what few there were -- Bernie is brilliant, but not a very clear coder) were in English. The Latin comments were mostly in one module (e_redisplay_.lisp), and mostly confined to the change journal at the beginning. But you were right about some of the weird function names. A few years before Bernie wrote Multics Emacs, he reimplemented the Multics file system. One of the things he implemented as part of it was a salvager (like Unix fsck). One of the things it would do is walk up and down the hierarchies, and if it reached the top it would check that it was at the same file as it started, and report an error if not. Apparently he thought this was not likely to happen, so he put the message in Latin. I don't remember the original, but it translated to something like "Unto the root is born a brother." Needless to say, a few years after Bernie left the company, a site actually got this error, and was very confused (it comes out on the operator's console, and operators are not likely to be well versed in Church Latin). We reworded the error message in the next release. Finally, the subroutine in the salvager that reconnects orphan files is called reverse_deciduate. Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
paul@deadpup.UUCP (paul) (02/22/89)
In article <8902210810.AA26436@MATH.Tau.Ac.IL>, finkel@TAURUS.BITNET writes: > About 5 years ago, I've seen a humorous article about a new '6502 cooprocessor' > called the 7801, that has many new 'interesting' instructions such as: > > Stop for Coffee Break - SCB > Branch if Power Off - BPO > I don't remember the exact mnnemonics used, but I thin you all got the idea. I had the chance to make an aquaintence with someone who was carrying about a set of opcodes for a "new processor chip" that went along such lines. My personal favorite was: RPA Rotate Pin Assignment the things they're doing with hardware these days :-). Paul J. Mech oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU!deadpup!paul
aad@stpstn.UUCP (Anthony A. Datri) (02/22/89)
>Stop for Coffee Break - SCB >Branch if Power Off - BPO I've got scores of them. I'll mail the list to anyone who wants it: 1401 1401 Incompatibility 360 360 Fibulation 370 370 Immolation 407 407 Emulation AAC Alter All Commands AAD Alter All Data AAR Alter At Random AAS Administer Alka-Seltzer AB Add Backwards ABC Abolish Basic Compiler ABR Add Beyond Range ACM Automatically Clear Memory ADDN ADD Nauseum AFF Add Fudge Factor AFP Abnormal Floating Point AFVC Add Finagle's Variable Constant AG Add Gibberish AGO Allow Games Only AI Add Improper AIB Attack Innocent Bystander AII Add Insult to Injury APLC Add Programmer to Logic Course APX Apply Power and eXplode -- @disclaimer(Any concepts or opinions above are entirely mine, not those of my employer, my GIGI, my VT05, or my 11/34) beak is@>beak is not Anthony A. Datri @SysAdmin(Stepstone Corporation) aad@stepstone.com stpstn!aad
rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) (02/23/89)
Rahul Dhesi (dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP wrote: >> And their BASIC programs probably say: >> >> REM set up signal handle for errors >> signal (ON_ERROR, hell); *sigh* Nope. CMU doesn't believe in BASIC. They're against it, basically. But, I'll bear this in mind for the BASIC class I'm teaching this summer...
bga@raspail.UUCP (Bruce Albrecht) (02/23/89)
One of my favorite ways of defining an infinite loop in a language similar to Modula-2 is: const HellFreezesOver = false; REPEAT stuff UNTIL HellFreezesOver;
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (02/23/89)
It's starting to all come back to me now. Some more procedure names
from the venerable B5500. For debugging data communication there was
a feature that saved the last few result descriptors in a circular
buffer. This was called the septictank and the feature was called
septic tanking. It was associated with arrays yeccch, argggh, and stink.
The utility program to read the septic tank was called roto/rooter
All B5500 programs had two-part names like that. There was a Navy
facility in Florida that had a program for reformatting Fortran
programs. It was called mack/truck
(all in caps, of course; no lower case with 6-bit BCL code)
haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu
haynes@ucscc.bitnet
..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes
"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chroniclewoolsey@nsc.nsc.com (Jeff Woolsey) (02/24/89)
Not to mention: CONST TheSunShines = TRUE; PROCEDURE MakeHay(); BEGIN ... END; WHILE TheSunShines DO MakeHay; -- -- Qualify nearly everything. Jeff Woolsey woolsey@nsc.NSC.COM -or- woolsey@umn-cs.cs.umn.EDU
hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) (02/24/89)
In article <2999@alliant.Alliant.COM> werme@alliant.Alliant.COM (Ric Werme) writes: }| A pride of lions }| A gaggle of geese }| An odd lot of programmers You forgot the collective noun for "senior COBOL programmer": A load of old COBOLers. (If you're not laughing, ask a British friend. Preferably a Cockney). (-:{ -- The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@ttidca.tti.com) Illegitimati Nil Citicorp(+)TTI Carborundum 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 452-9191, x2483 Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun|philabs|psivax}!ttidca!hollombe
karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) (02/24/89)
In article <1259@ccnysci.UUCP> sukenick@ccnysci.UUCP (SYG) writes: >>[pdp-10 command `K/D' would delete all your files and log you out] I believe that on our system `K/D' would at least ask whether you really wanted to delete everything; this warning could be suppressed by doubling the switch: `K/D/D'. `K/K' was also some sort of delete-and-logout, although not quite as bad. Typing just `K' would prompt for the missing switch, using the prompt `Confirm:'. Unfortunately some people thought that answering `K' again was the proper way to confirm this. Ichabod (not his real name) wrote an interesting program called `Twenty Questions', which would ask a series of multiple-choice questions, and prompt with `.' for the answer. Some questions were compound, and expected the answers separated by `/'. After asking the twentieth question, the program would exit instead of prompt (you can't tell the difference, since the system prompt is also `.'). The answer to the question, of course, was `K/D/D'.
kraz@houxa.ATT.COM (A.KRASNA) (02/24/89)
In article <1912I78BC@CUNYVM>, I78BC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Michael Polymenakos) writes: > > How about the young computer salesman giving some client a demonstration > of the new electronic word-processor? He loads up a large document, and > says: "watch this!". He hits a couple of keys, and converts every "i" in the > document to an "a", making the text unreadable. > > "And it you can change it all back, just like this" he proclaims,subsequently > converting all "a"s back to "i", including those that had been "a"s originally. I hate to admit it but I did the same thing when I taught people word processing. Lucky they were so dumb I amde it seem as it I had done it on purpose. I don't know why I'm doing this but I just love when non tech people talk about computers. My favorite is when the Home Shopping Club sells PCs . THe best line. Comes with an 8 bit processing for .... ...... processing 8 bits. -- Allen S. Krasna attbl-ho ( ) the space above left intentionally blank in memory of the late great Roy Orbison (after all had he not lived Thunder Road would have needed different lyrics)
hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) (02/24/89)
Some of my adventures in computing:
I first got involved with computers on a self-taught basis at CSU,
Northridge. At the time, their batch system was a CDC-3300. I was trying
to teach myself FORTRAN out of the manuals they left lying around in all
the terminal rooms.
After fumbling around for a few hours, I got to a point where my program
was trying to open a disk file for writing. It seemed to work the first
time, but failed on all subsequent runs. In desperation, I finally sought
out a system guru in the CS department. He took a look at my cards and
turned white. "My God!", he said, "You've opened a file on the master
disk! It's [the disk] 99% full!" I explained that I was just following
the instructions in the manuals. He confiscated my card deck. The next
day, all the relevant manuals had disappeared from the terminal rooms.
Another CSUN adventure (not mine):
One of the CS professors once promised an "A" in his course to anyone who
successfully brought down the system (the CDC-3300). Towards the end of
the semester, one student was doing poorly in all his projects and tests
and decided to take a desperate stab at it. He succeeded. With one punch
card. With one word on the punch card. The word was HALT. (He got his
"A", too).
On odd comments in source code:
One of my first tasks as a professional programmer was to aid in the
analysis of a Pascal compiler prior to porting it to a different CPU. An
error message output after failing to parse a complex expression:
Expression code too grotesque.
And a comment found after a complex attempt to validate a floating point
expression:
{ Well sh*t! After all that work! }
Another program we wrote had a subroutine called KLUGE(). It was, too.
Then there was the time I put a 5,000 page output limit on a batch job
submittal form, but left a 1 minute max CPU time on the job control card.
My program went into an infinite loop and the operator chose to honor the
job control over the written form. I came in the next day to collect my
output and found a four foot stack of paper waiting for me. Every page
was covered with 66 repetitions of the same line. About 250,000 lines in
all, I think. My boss was not amused.
A certain bank, which shall remain nameless, has a subsidiary in Puerto
Rico that uses their proprietary ATMs. The ATMs display instructions to
the customers in both English and Spanish. Legend has it the Spanish
screens used to be created by a little old lady with an English-Spanish
dictionary in an obscure office in New York. At one time the standard
greeting screen said, in English, "Please insert your card in the slot on
your right and take it out." This was duly, and literally, translated into
Spanish on the lines below. It was several months before the home office
learned that the literal translation of "slot" in Spanish has a rather
unfortunate slang interpretation in Puerto Rico. One of the fastest
screen mods we ever got out the door ... (I like to think we gave the
customers a giggle or two, but banks have little sense of humor).
> The 3B2 defines a couple of magic numbers used by the firmware
> to keep track of system state. <sys/firmware.h> defines some
> of them to be:
>
> #define FATAL 0xFEEDBEEFL /* fatal error, reset system */
> #define VECTOR 0xA11C0DEDL /* reset goes to rst_handler */
> #define REBOOT 0x8BADF00DL /* reboot w/o diags for UN*X */
> #define REENTRY 0xADEBAC1EL /* reenter fw from a reset w/o failure mesage */
> Stephen J. Friedl 3B2-kind-of-guy friedl@vsi.com
As I recall the IBM 370's used to display the hex code DEAD on the front
panel after executing the equivalent of the HALT instruction.
--
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@ttidca.tti.com) Illegitimati Nil
Citicorp(+)TTI Carborundum
3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 452-9191, x2483
Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun|philabs|psivax}!ttidca!hollombeandy@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) (02/24/89)
In article <5676@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >In article <1259@ccnysci.UUCP> sukenick@ccnysci.UUCP (SYG) writes: >>PDP-10 (`Dec System 10', that is :-) >DEC's name changes are usually very subtle. >The PDP-10 became the DECSystem-10 gradually enough that Computer >Abstracts didn't notice, and listed both separately for some years. PDP-10 is the name of an instruction-set architecture family, in the same sense that PDP-11 is the name of an instruction-set architecture family. Think of PDP-11s. Some run RSTS, others run RSX-11, while still others run unix. DECSystem-10 is a PDP-10 running the TOPS-10 Operating System. DECSystem-20 is a PDP-10 running the TOPS-20 Operating System. There are fairly strong similarities here. Most PDP-11 OSs are written in assembly-language, so they don't run on other computers; both TOPS-20 and TOPS-10 are written in PDP-10 assembler. Some PDP-11 OSs can only run on certain types of PDP-11s; RSX-11M requires an 11-34 or "better". TOPS-20 requires a KL10 RevB processor or newer. -andy UUCP: {arpa gateways, decwrl, uunet, rutgers}!polya.stanford.edu!andy ARPA: andy@polya.stanford.edu (415) 329-1718/723-3088 home/cubicle
joe@hanauma.stanford.edu (Joe Dellinger) (02/24/89)
My brother in law once opened up my Apple ][ (long unused), explaining to my sister why they were so popular: "See how much you can put inside one!" (meaning it had 8 slots) only to find it was stuffed full of Apple manuals! \ /\ /\ /\/\/\/\/\/\/\.-.-.-.-.......___________ \ / \ / \ /Dept of Geophysics, Stanford University \/\/\.-.-....___ \/ \/ \/Joe Dellinger joe@hanauma.stanford.edu decvax!hanauma!joe\/\.-._
Erik@cup.portal.com (Erik - Dufek) (02/24/89)
While working part time at a computer store part of my job was
assembling clone PC's from the major units. One week the store had
a special on 4.77MHz XT's. Problem was the shipment of motherboards
hadn't arrived. So the boss had me assemble 4.77MHz machines using
Turbo motherboards. To cripple the turbo mode I placed a jumper on
the motherboard where the speed switch normally connected. I wonder
if any of the customers ever found out that they could have a machine
that we were selling for $100 more just by pulling the jumper?
eriK
erik@cup.portal.comDevin_E_Ben-Hur@cup.portal.com (02/25/89)
> > One of my favorite ways of defining an infinite loop in a language similar to > Modula-2 is: > > const HellFreezesOver = false; > > REPEAT > stuff > UNTIL HellFreezesOver; What this has to do folklore, i don't know, but here's a varient: #define Death 1 #define Taxes 1 while (Death && Taxes) { stuff }
robert@island.uu.net (Robert Leyland) (02/25/89)
In article <6443@saturn.ucsc.edu> haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) writes: >It's starting to all come back to me now. Some more procedure names >from the venerable B5500. For ... And do you remember the name of the password/accounts security routine? Yes... It was:- J_EDGAR_HOOVER >(all in caps, of course; no lower case with 6-bit BCL code) those were the good old days :-) > >haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu >haynes@ucscc.bitnet >..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes > robert... -- Robert Leyland - Island Graphics, 4000 Civic Ctr Dr #400, San Rafael, CA 94903 {uunet|sun}!island!robert - (415) 491-1000 - GEnie: r.leyland - std disclaimers
tjpadula@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Thomas John Padula) (02/25/89)
I originally sent this to whoever it was who called for Computer Folklore stories, but I'm not sure if he/she ever got it. To whit: My brother goes to Caltech. Awhile ago he told me of a student there who had come up with a way to physically destroy an IBM PC from software. This student told Big Blue about it, and they just couldn't resist. They made him an offer- they would supply an IBM PC for him to destroy in their presence. If he was successful, he would tell them how he did it, and they'd give him a free (functioning) IBM. Well, the appointed day came, and so did IBM. They set up their machine on a table and sat down to watch. The student quietly inserted a disk and turned the machine on, then sat down. After the memory check, the computer loaded the program from disk. The drive kept running for a while. Soon the machine started to shake, then shake violently, and would have walked itself off the table had the power supply not shut down. It was quite dead and emitting that funny burnt-resistor smell. The IBM reps checked it and declared it irreppairable. My brother's friend now has a nice IBM PC he uses for terminal emulation, and support for his plants. This is how it worked- the program simply sped up and slowed down the disk drive until it found the resonant frequency of the case of he machine. The case slowly started to resonate, and soon the whole machine would be shaking. This would cause the cards and other innards to flex, and contacts would be made and broken, destroying chips left and right. Eventually something would short and the power supply would go. Pretty effective, tho it did take a while. Remember kids, don't try this at home. We're professionals here. :) "I keep trying to think but nothing happens..." tjpadula@phoenix.Princeton.EDU Thomas J. Padula tjpadula@winnie.Princeton.EDU 212 Foulke Hall princeton!phoenix!tjpadula Princeton University, NJ 08544 tjpadula@phoenix.BITNET 609-734-7411
werme@Alliant.COM (Ric Werme) (02/25/89)
In article <7153@polya.Stanford.EDU> andy@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) writes: >In article <5676@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >>In article <1259@ccnysci.UUCP> sukenick@ccnysci.UUCP (SYG) writes: >>>PDP-10 (`Dec System 10', that is :-) > >>The PDP-10 became the DECSystem-10 gradually enough that Computer >>Abstracts didn't notice, and listed both separately for some years. > >DECSystem-10 is a PDP-10 running the TOPS-10 Operating System. Sigh. I was going to not follow up on this, but since Andy did, I might as well too. I quote from the pdp10 reference handbook, second edition (C) 1971, otherwise known as the "phonebook" (it was the thickness of a urban phonebook and was printed on newsprint): "INTRODUCING THE TOPS-10 MONITOR "In the autumn of 1970, DIGITAL announced pahse I of the newest PDP-10 operating system, TOPS-10, Total Operating System. The most comphrehensive monitor available on a medium-to-large-scale computer, TOPS-10 greatly extends the capabilities of the present system." I believe DEC also introduced the term DECsystem-10 at the same time. The event was the introduction of the 5.01 TOPS-10, which came after the beloved 4S72 (swapping) and 4N72 (non-swapping) "timesharing monitors". (Timesharing had to be included because DEC had a model 10/30 which had a single user monitor.) 4N72 was the last system that could run off a DECtape, I believe, and 4S72 was small enough and simple enough so one person could understand the whole thing without too much trouble. DEC's marketing converted to the new names quickly enough, the people who dragged their heels were the customers (Total Operating System? Obviously marketing hype) and those who saw the demise of the PDP prefix with the adoption of the DECsystem-10 moniker. (And VAX sealed it.) BTW, PDP stands for Programmed Data Processor. Back when the government had a special board to review all computer purchases, DEC brought out its first machine, the PDP-1. I think it only cost $160K, and really didn't meet the spirit of the review panel since other computers were over a M$. By calling it a programmed data processor instead of a computer, government purchasers could bypass the review. Also BTW, the computer museum in Boston has a PDP-1 that they fire up every so often to run SpaceWar. I was there for the 25th anniversary. Beautifully designed game. I learned more about oribtal dynamics from the PDP-11 SpaceWar we wrote at CMU than from most of the books I've read on it. It's a real disappointment that so few games since SpaceWar have tried to teach anything other than how fast you can bang on the fire button. -- | A pride of lions | Eric J Werme | | A gaggle of geese | uucp: decvax!linus!alliant | | An odd lot of programmers | Phone: 603-673-3993 |
abcscnge@csuna.csun.edu (Scott "The Pseudo-Hacker" Neugroschl) (02/25/89)
In article <1284@raspail.UUCP> bga@raspail.UUCP (Bruce Albrecht) writes:
]
]One of my favorite ways of defining an infinite loop in a language similar to
]Modula-2 is:
]
]const HellFreezesOver = false;
]
]REPEAT
] stuff
]UNTIL HellFreezesOver;
We had a similar one when I was learning Pascal (ugh :-() at UC Santa Cruz:
const
TheProfessorIsAnAsshole = true;
.
.
.
while TheProfessorIsAnAsshole do begin
stuff
end;
--
Scott "The Pseudo-Hacker" Neugroschl
UUCP: ...!sm.unisys.com!csun!csuna.csun.edu!abcscnge
-- "Beat me, whip me, make me code in Ada"
-- Disclaimers? We don't need no stinking disclaimers!!!steve@nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia) (02/25/89)
My turn, I guess ... The scene: startup vendor of a commercial "application generator" for Unix. The Time: 1983 or 84, before being a commercial software vendor for Unix was cool. We had a contractor who shall remain nameless but who was well known in our group for writing really stupid string manipulation code and decorating it with flaming comments about how much better the string handling in PL/I is than C's. One of his modules had some debugging code, including the following message: DEBFILE Fuck up! which it would print if debugging was enabled and it was unable to open the trace file it wanted. We had just completed a scan of the code for error messages for the documentation folks and had cleaned up a few, but as luck would have it this one hid in a little-used and organizationaly segregated module....... As far as we know this error occured exactly once in the field. The customer who saw this just HAD to be the one person in all of California who wouldn't say the word "fuck" on the telephone. The same programmer had a routine called "givehead" to print the page headers in his report generator, and many other gems. Fortunatly we weren't selling source. -- Steve Nuchia South Coast Computing Services uunet!nuchat!steve POB 890952 Houston, Texas 77289 (713) 964 2462 Consultation & Systems, Support for PD Software.
dbell@cup.portal.com (David J Bell) (02/26/89)
From Allen S. Krasna: > My favorite is when the Home Shopping Club >sells PCs . THe best line. Comes with an 8 bit processing for .... >...... processing 8 bits. > Or when they were selling (at a good price, for all that) an EGA monitor a week or so ago. Didn't define it as EGA, but by number of colors, resolution, etc., then stated that it would work with *ANY* PC or compatible out there - just plug and play! Had some poor Grandma on. They'd recently bought a PC for the grandchildren, but the little darlings didn't want black and white, so now they'll have color. Does anyone mention *color graphics adapter card*, or *EGA* graphics card? Hell no... Dave
philba@microsoft.UUCP (Phil Barrett) (02/26/89)
When I was a grad student in CS, the school had a systems lab and had hired a senior in HS to do systems grunt work. One of his assignments was to run backups on our `massive' PDP-11/40 everyday at noon. He was quite taken with himself and was pretty pushy about kicking people off the system. His login Id on the system (V6, no less) was `oracle' and he certainly behaved as if it was appropriate. One day, my partner and I had finished a project and were printing out required documentation to hand in that afternoon. The printer had been really flakey and getting a complete printout was a b*tch. Of course, noon rolls around and sure enough, in comes Oracle to do the daily dump. No begging, pleading or cajoling on my part detered him from swift execution of his appointed duty at noon sharp and we had about 10 minutes of printing left. Meanwhile, my partner was typing a little script that printed Panic: invalid space on dev rp01 (or some such device) in an endless loop on the system console (an honest to god for real TTY - ASR33). The Systems Programmer took a look at it and said something like `I've never seen that in the code -- where's it coming from'. Oracle starts arguing about how `he had seen it and the best thing to do is let it run its course before taking the system down'. Gee, what a great idea. Our print out finished, we killed off the script and sauntered off to class laughing the entire way.
art@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Arthur P. Goldberg) (02/26/89)
At Cal Tech's observatories had a computer in the late 70s whose disk crashed its head several times over the course of a year. The crashes were extremely severe. The head would grind into the magnetic coating, stripping it off large sections of the disk and filling the inside of the drive with ferric oxide filings. An UGLY sight. The repair people would come, replace the disk drive and reassemble the disk from tape. Then the new drive would do the same thing several months later! The machine was in a nice, clean room with the door closed, in a normal office building. Nobody could determine what was happening. Then one smart and observant repairman asked whether the copy machine sitting in the hall outside the computer room was always there. It was. It turned out that the copy machine toner would evaporate and leak. Because it was denser than air the toner fumes would fall down to the floor and be sucked under the door of the computer room by the room's negatively pressurized ventilation. Once inside the room, the toner would delaminate the disk, and presto! we'd get a disk drive quisinart! Arthur Goldberg Illegitimati Non Carborundum 3680-D Boelter Hall UCLA Computer Science Department LA, Ca. 90024 (213) 825-2864 / 656-3763 art@cs.ucla.edu This program posts messages to 10 million computers across the known universe. Sending the message will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, significantly increasing the federal debt. Are you sure you want to do this? [yn] YES, by all means YES!
brad@optilink.UUCP (Brad Yearwood) (02/26/89)
About comments and labels of prurient or arcane interest - these have
been around a _long_ time. IBM computers used to come with a nice little
cart full of maintenance documentation. I remember browsing through the
diagnostic listings supplied with a 1401 and finding a program which appeared
to have been written by a hot rod enthusiast. Those labels that weren't the
usual useful things like A1, LOOP2, HERE (at least where the ever-popular *-29
wasn't taking the place of what should've been a label) were all things like
PIPES, HEADRS (only 6 characters allowed in Autocoder), and CARBS. The
comments were about average for that body of software though - almost
non-existent.
Brad Yearwood
Optilink Corp. {pyramid, tekbspa, pixar}!optilink!brad
Petaluma, CAraymond@ganymede (Raymond Man) (02/26/89)
In our department, the unit "linda" refers to either a measurement of disk space or computer time used. This is in remembrance of our colleague. 1 linda = 40 hours of Cray-XMP time origin: "Darn, I made a mistaken in my input and there goes my whole simulation run." "How much computer time you nedd for a run ?" "40." 1 linda = 40G bytes origin: "This is computing user services, we would like to talk to Linda." "This is she." "It seems you alone occupy half of our file storage system. Could you backup some of your files to tape ?" . . . "Say, Linda, How large is the file system anyway?" "I think it's around 80 gigabytes." She now has her Ph.D. and works in St. Louis. Hope she is not reading this but in case she does: "Linda, we all miss you." Just call me `Man'. raymond@jupiter.ame.arizona.edu
root@beep.UUCP (Local Demi-god) (02/27/89)
In article <26406@cci632.UUCP>, jbe@cci632.UUCP ( co-op) writes: #> In article <3547@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM> terryl@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM writes: #> >In article <1357@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> aem@Mthvax.Miami.Edu (a.e.mossberg) writes: #> >>In <4744@sfsup.UUCP>, <saal@/doc/dsg/saalUUCP> wrote: #> It is really nice to see more women getting into aviation, particularly #> as pilots. However, in the interests of equality a few things are #> going to have to be renamed. The question that is really plaguing me is, #> what are we going to rename the cockpit? #> My friend promptly pointed out that the ejection seat is going to be #> at least as much of a problem. I would think that "joystick" would be more of a problem. -- The Go'z beep!root "No job too big; no fee too big!" --Dr. Peter Venkman, "Ghostbusters"
sukenick@ccnysci.UUCP (SYG) (02/27/89)
>"And it you can change it all back, just like this" he proclaims,subsequently >converting all "a"s back to "i", including those that had been "a"s originally. What, no `undo' key? As I tell my class, the `u' key can be your best friend....... (don't leave home without it!) (This is drilled into them as everyone makes outrageous changes on a practice file and then corrects with `u'....and then the limitation is shown by changing all the l's to 1's, then erasing one character, then `u' (`u' will work only for last change).
morris@jade.jpl.nasa.gov (Mike Morris) (02/28/89)
Years ago, I did some Data General consulting out of my/my parents house.
Some memories: There was a rev of AOS (3.something, I believe) that could
be crashed easily - just have several users hold down the tab & repeat keys.
Something about the system expanding the tabs to 8 spaces, which filled up
and overflowed the ring buffers and clobbered OS code. Instant system panic.
Or the 12.5 mb (14" platter!) winchester disk that could become a 25mb by
moving a jumper and reformatting it.
Or the old Nova 800/1200 4k core (!) memories that could be burnt up
if you stored a 0 at address 0 and then jumped to that location (octal 0=JMP 0).
Or the story that the Nova 1200 (with a 1200ns clock time) was "invented"
to use up the warehouse(s) full of core stacks that were just a little too
slow for the Nova 800...
Or the fact that changing 5 microcode ROMs would change a Nova 4 into a
Eclipse S-140...
Or you could suck out the solder and pour in the chips and convert a 128k
16-bit Nova memory board into a 256k Eclipse 21-bit error-correcting memory
board...
Back in school we had a Burroughs 3500 (Pasadena City College). I was
doing some "lets see what happens" programming (in Fortran) and the
instructor politely asked that I let him look at my stuff before I submitted
it (overnight batch). You see, there was this bug that another student
found: You define a gigantic block common (3-d complex matrices will do it...)
and then zero it. The system overflows memory to disk (Burroughs had virtual
memory loooong before IBM) and there was this bug in the max size of the
virtual file check routine.... Before this earlier student's bug was caught
they staff had to do a half a dozen system reloads/regens - from a dozen
boxes of binary punch cards! His memory array was larger than _all_ of the
disk the system had on it, and he had zeroed all of it...
A story that a friend tells is where a classmate figured out how to set
the schools IBM 1620 system memory to all parity checks... The system was
called the CADET, which stood for "Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try - the machine
did all it's math by table lookup (yes, that was one machine that could tell
you that 2+2=5 with a straight face - just diddle a few bits in memory).
Or the rev 1.0 of a OS that deleted the file, but forgot to mark the space
as free... It didn't take long for a 10mb disk to shrink to < 1mb...
BTW - the Nova 4 in my dining room is for sale. 128k, 16-slot chassis,
and several peripherals, including a DECwriter III as the system printer.
Boots RDOS, multi-user basic. Wichester disk, 8" floppy, 2400' mag tape,
dual consoles, extras. Make offer.
US Snail: Mike Morris UUCP: Morris@Jade.JPL.NASA.gov
P.O. Box 1130 Also: WA6ILQ
Arcadia, Ca. 91006-1130
#Include disclaimer.standard | The opinions above probably do not evenmakela@tukki.jyu.fi (Otto J. Makela) (02/28/89)
I'll always remember the comment reading: THIS PROGRAM WILL MAKE ALL THE OUTPUT TO THE TERMINAL WANTED. (...people streaming from miles around to get a peek at the terminal output) Otto J. Makela (with poetic license to kill), University of Jyvaskyla InterNet: makela@tukki.jyu.fi, BitNet: MAKELA_OTTO_@FINJYU.BITNET BBS: +358 41 211 562 (V.22bis/V.22/V.21, 24h/d), Phone: +358 41 613 847 Mail: Kauppakatu 1 B 18, SF-40100 Jyvaskyla, Finland, EUROPE
vevea@paideia.uchicago.edu (Jack L. Vevea) (02/28/89)
In article <864@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> morris@jade.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Mike Morris) writes: (lots of folklore deleted) >Or the rev 1.0 of a OS that deleted the file, but forgot to mark the space >as free... It didn't take long for a 10mb disk to shrink to < 1mb... As long as you're naming names on everything, why not give credit here: this one was Prime's sublime accomplishment, if I'm not mistaken. OBJ (paraphrased from April '89 Playboy, not by permission; offensive to lawyers): A lawyer was approached by the devil one day. The Prince of Darkness informed him that he could arrange it so that he would win _all_ of his court cases, make twice as much money, work half as hard, be appointed to the Supreme Court by the age of 49, and live to be 90. All he had to do was promise the devil his soul, the soul of his wife, his children, and the souls of all of his ancestors. The lawyer thought for a minute, and then responded: "So what's the catch?"
neil@miclon.UUCP (Neil Readwin) (02/28/89)
In article <545@hrc63.co.uk>, pj@hrc63.co.uk (Mr P Johnson "Baddow") writes: > > "OK." said the maintainance man, "put the copy into the disk drive." > The secretary tried. > "It wont go in." she said. > "Well how did you make the copy in the first place?" asked the > maintainance man. > "With a photocopier. How else do you copy anything?" Reminds me of one that happened at a company I used to work for. A customer was having difficulties installing some software, so we asked them to send us copies of the floppy disks. A couple of days later a letter arrives with a set of photocopied disks. The funny thing was, a brief examination of the disk labels indicated that we had sent them software for the wrong version of the OS, so the problem was resolved using the photocopies ! -- ------ Sorry to waste net bandwidth, but it seemed important at the time.-------
jeffery@ziggy.UUCP (Jeff Sheese) (03/02/89)
In article <15033@cup.portal.com> Erik@cup.portal.com (Erik - Dufek) writes: > So the boss had me assemble 4.77MHz machines using >Turbo motherboards. To cripple the turbo mode I placed a jumper on >the motherboard where the speed switch normally connected. I wonder >if any of the customers ever found out that they could have a machine >that we were selling for $100 more just by pulling the jumper? > Almost as bad - back in 81 I worked at an Apple Dealer in Dayton, Ohio that also sold the Qume Sprint V printer. A modification/upgrade to the Qume was introduced on the market, where a dealer who was not very electrically inclined could upgrade the normal 16k buffer to a full 64k buffer for $200. The upgrade was to remove a series of 6 jumpers, and replace them with a plug in dip switch.
rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) (03/02/89)
>> And do you remember the name of the password/accounts security routine? >> Yes... It was:- >> J_EDGAR_HOOVER Funny timing here: As part of the "non-cheating" requirements of a programming class that CMU insists I take, we are required to store our files in a subdirectory (of our personal storage area) that will, theoretically, be private & secure & unavailable to other users (HAH!). Well, I received comments from one of the teaching assistants last week that calling my program directory the same name as the class (15-211) was not a wise choice, as it would not be secure to prying eyes; he suggested that instead, I create a new directory with an obscure name to help stop the curious (I have my doubts, but...) So, the new name of my directory, inspired by both a certain law enforcement agency and the immortal Spike Jones & the City Slickers is: FBAIDA (Pronounced "F B Ayeeda, as in a type of opera)
hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) (03/02/89)
Here's another old one, from the days when computers were marvels to be
admired, rather than vulnerable assets to be locked away. The following
sign used to hang in the machine room at UCLA (and still does, for all I
know):
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS! DAS COMPUTENMACHINE IST NICHT FUR
GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN. IST EASY SNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK,
BLOWEN FUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT PITZENSPARKEN. DAS RUBBERNECKEN
SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS HANTS IN DAS POCKETS, RELAXEN UND VATCH DAS
BLINKENLIGHTS!
--
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@ttidca.tti.com) Illegitimati Nil
Citicorp(+)TTI Carborundum
3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 452-9191, x2483
Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun|philabs|psivax}!ttidca!hollombepaul@athertn.Atherton.COM (Paul Sander) (03/02/89)
One of my clients in a previous job used to write office software for a
one of his previous jobs. When he left, he renamed the hard disk volume
on the office PClone to "DELETED." Imagine the horror the next morning
when people turned on the machine to find the message "VOLUME IS DELETED."
The same guy wrote some sort of cross-reference program for their
inventory (they made a living renting 35mm slides to advertising agencies,
and their inventory was rather large). The boss saw the program running
and didn't like it. It seems it ran so fast that he couldn't believe it
was working right. So my friend added delay loops and a bunch of BS with
the flavor of "retrieving blotz" and printed its results after a few
minutes of wasted time.
Then the boss bought a faster machine because this program ran too slow...
--
Paul Sander (408) 734-9822 | Do YOU get nervous when a
paul@Atherton.COM | sys{op,adm,prg,engr} says
{decwrl,sun,hplabs!hpda}!athertn!paul | "oops..." ?charlie@vicorp.UUCP (Charlie Goldensher) (03/04/89)
In article <2047@tank.uchicago.edu>, vevea@paideia.uchicago.edu (Jack L. Vevea) writes: > OBJ (paraphrased from April '89 Playboy, not by permission; offensive I'm curious. Is there any special reason you chose to be explicit about the fact that you didn't get permission to copy? I've seen similar notes in other postings. Anyone care to comment?
I78BC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Michael Polymenakos) (03/06/89)
This string is really getting old and seems to be fading away, but while cleaning my place I found the following piece of paper, and thought it really belongs here: +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | <Big Letterhead, heavy bond paper> | | | | BIT Software, Inc. | | December 14, 1987 | Michael S. Polymenakos ... .. .... Brooklyn, NY, 11210 Dear Mr. Bryce: This letter is... : <insert pitch for a software product here> : Sincerely | <Signature in blue ink, you know, makes it look like this | | comes from a person and not a machine..... > | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ I kept it on my office, a daily reminder to actually read those things that come out of my own printer, at least once in a while, especially before anyone else gets to read them first. ------- || | ||| | | || || ||| | || | ||||| || Michael S. Polymenakos BC-CUNY |||| ||| || | ||||| ---------------------- New York ||| || | || || | ||| |
pda@stiatl.UUCP (Paul Anderson) (03/06/89)
A long time ago, on a processor that screamed (compared to the Mighty Ones we use today :-), I encountered the following sequence in the kernel: DI ; stop this race car. HLT ; grind... HLT ; shriek! HLT ; STOP! HLT ; uggh, just too much processor momentum here! It was a Z80 based system. The idea was that at the time of the DI, there could be 3 pending interrupts that would be serviced, and as everyone recalls, an interrupt on the Z80 will cause you to execute the instruction on return from the ISR. Or something like that! :-) Paul -- Paul Anderson gatech!stiatl!pda (404) 841-4000 X isn't just an adventure, X is a way of life...
belld@vax1.tcd.ie (03/08/89)
I remember hearing that an early version of the Commodore Pet would catch fire if certain addresses had certain contents. Something about the clock being forced to run at too high a speed. (Can anyone confirm/ deny this?) -- Derek Bell ************************* * dbell@maths.tcd.ie * Are you seriously suggesting that coconuts * belld@vax1.tcd.ie * migrate??? ************************* - Monty Python & the Holy Grail
hermit@ssyx.ucsc.edu (William R. Ward) (03/08/89)
I'm sorry to waste space with this, but I came into the "computer folklore" business a bit late. I've enjoyed reading many of these stories, and I was hoping I could ask whomever is collecting them to send me a copy of the compilation. I've tried following the "References" lines but I can't find a message common to all which would direct me back to the original poster. Sorry and thanks-in-advance. *-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-*-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-* | William R. Ward | "Delays created while you wait" | *-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-*-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-* | Internet: hermit@ssyx.ucsc.edu | UUCP: ...ucbvax!ucscc!ssyx!hermit | | Voice: (408) 688-6547 | QuantumLink: TheHermit1 | *-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-*-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-*
jackiw@cs.swarthmore.edu (Nick Jackiw) (03/09/89)
In article <6624@saturn.ucsc.edu> hermit@ssyx.ucsc.edu (William R. Ward) writes: > I'm sorry to waste space with this, but I came into the "computer folklore" > business a bit late. I've enjoyed reading many of these stories, and I was > hoping I could ask whomever is collecting them to send me a copy of the > compilation. > Or better yet---WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE RE-POST THEM? ======= > *-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-*-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-* > | William R. Ward | "Delays created while you wait" | > *-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-*-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-* Did you know your name's an anagram for "Warm, Wild Lair?" "Irma will draw?" Wow! -- +-------------------+-jackiw@cs.swarthmore.edu / !rutgers!bpa!swatsun!jackiw-+ | nicholas jackiw | jackiw%campus.swarthmore.edu@swarthmr.bitnet | +-------------------+-VGP/MathDept/Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081--+ "Ah...I've got this CHRONIC pain." _True Believer_
dbstmars@dahlia.waterloo.edu (Dan St.Mars) (03/10/89)
In article <36549@vax1.tcd.ie> belld@vax1.tcd.ie writes: > > I remember hearing that an early version of the Commodore >Pet would catch fire if certain addresses had certain contents. Something >about the clock being forced to run at too high a speed. (Can anyone confirm/ >deny this?) >-- I wouldn't be too surprised. In school we used to fire in a few POKEs that make the screen shake along with a high pitched squeel. We usually got dumped on for it (with good reason :-) ). __________________________________________________________________________ Dan St.Mars University Of Waterloo dbstmars@dahlia. Applied Math Waterloo, Ontario, Canada waterloo.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------
mlloyd@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Lloyd) (03/11/89)
In article <36549@vax1.tcd.ie> belld@vax1.tcd.ie writes: > > I remember hearing that an early version of the Commodore >Pet would catch fire if certain addresses had certain contents. Something >about the clock being forced to run at too high a speed. (Can anyone confirm/ >deny this?) >-- Nah, Nah, Nah - yer got it all wrong, squire. The story goes (and this one is true) that the Commodore Pet early versions not only had integral monitors (all one big box, y'know) but the software had a _certain_ amount of control over the screen. This meant that, if you REALLY knew what you were doing you could (i) disable the refresh interrupt where the raster beam (the thing that scans down a monitor at huge speeds to make the picture) retraces to the top left corner (ii) stop the beam in its place result: one VERY BRIGHT SPOT in the middle of the screen somewhere, which if left will burn clean through the monitor, causing irreprable damage. This contradicted the first law of such machines: nothing you can type at the keyboard could do any PHYSICAL damage to the machine. I wonder if anyone else has examples of this sort of behaviour? (not wishing to drag out an already overlong theme ;-) ) Mike. Mike Lloyd, Dept of Statistics, | Trinity College, Dublin, | "COGITO, ERGO CHICO & ZEPPO" Ireland. | Tonio K. (mlloyd@maths.tcd.ie) |
c60c-3ds@web-1b.berkeley.edu (John Kawakami) (03/12/89)
The PET had the ability to stop the monitor's beam, so you could burn out
the phosphor real fast...
In a similar vein, the Atari ST has software control over the floppy disk
mechanism. It is possible to push the head past the prescribed 80 tracks.
Some bright folks figured out early on that you can get a whole extra track
of data on each floppy. Then some even brighter folks figured that you
could push the head out even more and squeeze in another track.
Of course, some floppy drives couldn't go out to track 82...
Here a crunch, there a crunch, and the drive refuses to read again.
So watch out folks. Now can this happen on other machines? I bet it can.
John Kawakami c60c-3ds@web.berkeley.edu dbell@cup.portal.com (David J Bell) (03/13/89)
>> I remember hearing that an early version of the Commodore >>Pet would catch fire if certain addresses had certain contents. Something >>about the clock being forced to run at too high a speed. (Can anyone confirm/ >>deny this?) >had a _certain_ amount of control over the screen. This meant that, if you >REALLY knew what you were doing you could > (i) disable the refresh interrupt where the raster beam (the thing that > (ii) stop the beam in its place >result: one VERY BRIGHT SPOT in the middle of the screen somewhere, which if > left will burn clean through the monitor, causing irreprable damage. > >This contradicted the first law of such machines: nothing you can type at the >keyboard could do any PHYSICAL damage to the machine. I wonder if anyone >else has examples of this sort of behaviour? Certainly! In fact, I inadvertently did this myself... In an IBM PC/XT or clone, (AT, too, I'm sure) it is very easy to modify the video controller VLSI device's parameter registers fom DEBUG or by doing port outputs in BASIC. With some monitors, changing the horizontal sync rate drastically can cause it to fry the horizontal output section and high-voltage power supply. Dave
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) (03/13/89)
Can't remember if I posted this one already. The GE 635 and its
Honeywell successors use 2-s complement notation even for floating
point numbers. During computation the fraction part is kept in
36-bit registers, and the exponent is kept in a separate register.
When a floating point result is to be stored in memory the floating
store instruction shifts the fraction part to the right to make
room for the exponent, so the whole thing fits into one 36-bit word.
Now when you shift a 2-s complement number to the right, letting
bits fall off the end, the result is that the error is biased.
Positive numbers become smaller, less positive, and negative numbers
become bigger, more negative. So the error in a large sequence of
calculations doesn't tend to average toward zero.
The folklore part: I was told that this was recognized as a serious
problem when the computer was used to compute instructions for a
numerically-controlled cutting torch. The torch was cutting a
really big, something like 16-foot diameter circular plate of steel.
Well, when the torch came around back near the starting point the
accumulated error was such that the track failed to close on itself;
there was a jog of a couple of inches between the starting and ending
points.
The obvious way to fix this is to change the floating store operation
so that it rounds the number to be stored, rather than just lopping off
bits. However that couldn't be done, because some software writer had
discovered that the floating store operation was a fine way to pack
a byte, placed in the exponent register, on to the end of a string
of bytes stored in a word. If the bytes happened to be characters
then rounding on a character string might make a mess of things.
Hence it was necessary to introduce a new instruction, floating store
rounded. The compilers were all modified to use this instruction
to store floating point values and to never use the original floating
store instruction.
haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu
haynes@ucscc.bitnet
..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes
"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chroniclepdermody@maths.tcd.ie (Paul Dermody) (03/13/89)
In article <21525@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> c60c-3ds@web-1b.berkeley.edu (John Kawakami) writes: >In a similar vein, the Atari ST has software control over the floppy disk >mechanism. It is possible to push the head past the prescribed 80 tracks. >of data on each floppy. Then some even brighter folks figured that you >could push the head out even more and squeeze in another track. >Of course, some floppy drives couldn't go out to track 82... >Here a crunch, there a crunch, and the drive refuses to read again. A similar situation exists on the Amiga. Software companies, in the fight against piracy, have protection systems which check for certain information on tracks beyond the 80th. So much so, copiers are available that will copy a whole disk, track 0 to track 79, and then do tracks 80,81,82,83. One copier that will ( or at least claims to ) do this is AHA-Copier. I also hear of a virus on the Amiga which will tell the drive to read past where it should, so much so that it causes structural damage to it. And who says you cannot make a computer do anything? -- Paul Dermody: Mathsc. | "An Irishman who doesn't drink. There's a turn up Trinity College, Dublin | for the books!": Light a penny candle, Maeve Binchy. Ireland. | "An Irishman who doesn't drink. Isn't that a Theorem: 26 + 6 = 1 | Contradiction in terms?": Staten Island bouncer.
pt@geovision.uucp (Paul Tomblin) (03/14/89)
In article <36549@vax1.tcd.ie> belld@vax1.tcd.ie writes: > I remember hearing that an early version of the Commodore >Pet would catch fire if certain addresses had certain contents. Something >about the clock being forced to run at too high a speed. (Can anyone confirm/ >deny this?) It's true, the Fat40 (4032) would do this. It was called the Killer Poke. Anyone with money to burn could try this one to amaze thier friends :-) Especially after telling them that there's no way to hurt a computer from the keyboard. For full points, any body remember the value? The only one I remember from my Fat40 days was the basic instruction WAIT, which was supposed to wait until a memory location reached a certain value (for monitoring memory mapped i/o or ISRs). If you typed WAIT 6502,n it would respond "MICROSOFT!" n times. This is evidently a way to protect your stuff against piracy. If somebody claimed they just mimiced your program without copying it, you could use the undocumented quirks as evidence. There was a word process for the Pet that would play Pomp and Circumstance if you held down a certain 3 keys! Very useful for a word processor, but I'd rather have a Page Preview mode. :-) -- Paul Tomblin, Second Officer, Golgafrinchan B Ark | Canada's Acid Lakes: UUCP: nrcaer!cognos!geovision!pt ?? | 150,000 Points of Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here aren't | Blight. necessarily even mine! |
dana@koko.UUCP (Dana Allen) (03/15/89)
Well, here's a good one I did this past summer while I was working part time for Gallo winery. Our system, an IBM 3090, is water cooled. One weekend we were pulling up and re-routing old cables. The system was shutdown (thank god!). I'm trying to trace a cable when I step back and hear a snap. You got it; I'd stepped on a pvc pipe supplying cooling water. The geyser it created was quite a sight, and so was I. Standing there soaking wet and wondering if I was going to have a job the next day. The pipe was fixed and everything worked out ok, but that will be an experience I'll never forget.
bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker) (03/17/89)
In article <669@maths.tcd.ie> mlloyd@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Lloyd) writes: +------------- | [...] |result: one VERY BRIGHT SPOT in the middle of the screen somewhere, which if | left will burn clean through the monitor, causing irreprable damage. | |This contradicted the first law of such machines: nothing you can type at the |keyboard could do any PHYSICAL damage to the machine. I wonder if anyone |else has examples of this sort of behaviour? (not wishing to drag out |an already overlong theme ;-) ) +------------- You can also do this in IBM PC's by zapping the registers in the display adapter to run at impossible speeds - it can destroy the monitor in such a way that a fire is possible (melt the flyback transformer)... +------------- |Mike Lloyd, Dept of Statistics, | |Trinity College, Dublin, | "COGITO, ERGO CHICO & ZEPPO" |Ireland. | Tonio K. |(mlloyd@maths.tcd.ie) | +------------- Cheers, -- O . Bruce Becker Toronto, Ont. o _///_ // Internet: bdb@becker.UUCP, bruce@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu <`)= _<< BitNet: BECKER@HUMBER.BITNET \\\ \\ "I'm not sure if there's a Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle..."
abcscnge@csuna.csun.edu (Scott "The Pseudo-Hacker" Neugroschl) (03/17/89)
In the latest PC Mag, John Dvorak's column is devoted to this subject. (maybe he reads this newsgroup? ;-<) Objoke: Why does beer go through your system so much faster than water? A: Water has to stop to change color -- Scott "The Pseudo-Hacker" Neugroschl UUCP: ...!sm.unisys.com!csun!csuna.csun.edu!abcscnge -- unless explicitly stated above, this article not for use by rec.humor.funny -- Disclaimers? We don't need no stinking disclaimers!!!
rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) (03/18/89)
Old computers never die (anymore), they show up on home shopping networks... I received a COMB catalog in yesterday's mail. In it they advertise a Lisa 2. Yes, a Lisa 2! At one time costing over $10,000, now only $999! And, you'll all be glad to know that it includes a mouse, so that you won't have to memorize all of those buttons. Yes, that's almost exactly what the add said. I'm waiting for the Commodore KIM-2 to show up next...
adchen@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Anthony Dunyeh Chen) (03/18/89)
In article <YY8IC4y00Xo782h4gf@andrew.cmu.edu> rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) writes: >Old computers never die (anymore), they show up on home shopping networks... >I'm waiting for the Commodore KIM-2 to show up next... Hey, I'm waiting for just the right moment to pick up my very own Trash, uh, I mean TRS-80!!!! Heh
Zap@cup.portal.com (Tim Philip Cadell) (03/19/89)
> My brother goes to Caltech. Awhile ago he told me of a student there >who had come up with a way to physically destroy an IBM PC from >software. This student told Big Blue about it, and they just couldn't >resist. Wayne says: (I don't take anything that Wayne says seriously) I'm not sure about this one but the TRS-80 Model II computer from Radio Shack had a problem that I was told about. Never tried it (I own one but _I'm_ not going to try it!) but supposedly if you turned off the video (control bit on one of the ports), the power supply started building potential and a freaking big capacitor blew apart. Supposedly it happened one day at a Radio Shack repair shop and the top of the cap buried itself in a cinderblock wall. Zap Savage Savage Research "Making Tomorrow's Mistakes Today" P.S. Wayne also says (as an example of why we don't believe him) that there is a basketball court at the top of the Matterhorn at Disneyland.
srt@aero.ARPA (Scott "CBS" Turner) (03/22/89)
In article <15964@cup.portal.com> Zap@cup.portal.com (Tim Philip Cadell) writes: >P.S. Wayne also says (as an example of why we don't believe him) that there > is a basketball court at the top of the Matterhorn at Disneyland. I wouldn't call it a full-sized court, but there is indeed a basketball rim and backboard in a maintenance room at the top of the Matterhorn. It was originally put up (in 1978) as part of an elaborate pun that you can no doubt figure out yourself (Matterhorn, "hoops", get it?) but turned out to be so much fun that it hung around until at least 1984. Not having worked at the 'Land in a while, I can't say if it is still there or not. -- Scott
garison@mirror.UUCP (Gary Piatt) (03/23/89)
Ronald J. Notarius writes:
=>I received a COMB catalog in yesterday's mail. In it they advertise a Lisa 2.
=>Yes, a Lisa 2! At one time costing over $10,000, now only $999!
I used to work for Visual Technology, a company that was growing faster
than crabgrass until they decided to jump on the PC bandwagon. They went
into hock purchasing a company that made a (very bad) PC clone they called
the "Commuter". Nobody in the marketplace trusted Visual's reputation as
it applied to PCs, so very few people actually *bought* the Commuters.
For the most part, the Commuters sat on shelves in the stockroom, being
sold in dribs and drabs. After a while (a *long* while), Visual wised up
and stopped producing the Commuters.
Well, along came JVC, the wholesale clearance house. They knew a mediocre
thing when they saw it, so they ordered 10,000 Commuters, to sell at way
below cost. The problem was, Visual didn't *have* 10,000 Commuters, so
they had to stop production of the things that were actually making money
and retool the production line to crank out thousands of Commuters that
weren't going to generate any profit. What seemed like a good way to clean
out the stockroom turned into a fiasco: they lost money building the extra
Commuters, and they missed the deadlines on the equipment they *should*
have been making.
Personally, I would have burned the silly things and collected the
insurance.
-Garison-
===========================================================================
My attorney (who costs me a pretty penny) says I should add this disclaimer:
This is by no means intended to besmirch the already-tarnished character of
Visual Technology. They were a good, progressive company that produced
high-quality ASCII terminals. They just made some mistakes in the past
several years. This was one of them.ed@iitmax.IIT.EDU (Ed Federmeyer) (03/23/89)
>> In article <36549@vax1.tcd.ie> belld@vax1.tcd.ie writes: >> >> I remember hearing that an early version of the Commodore >>Pet would catch fire if certain addresses had certain contents. Something >>about the clock being forced to run at too high a speed. (Can anyone confirm/ >>deny this?) > In article <669@maths.tcd.ie> mlloyd@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Lloyd) writes: >The story goes (and this one is true) that the Commodore Pet early versions [ Could be programmed to produce screen burn-in on the built in monitors ] > A neat trick to try is to repeatedly change from lowercase (Business) mode to upper case (graphics) mode with this little BASIC program on the CBM 8032: 10 PRINT CHR$(14): PRINT CHR$(147): GOTO 10 This would cause all kinds of strange and unexpected flashing and rolling of the screen! Quite startling to the unsuspecting... hehehe. :-) It LOOKS like it would be extreamly dangerous... Makes all kinds of whizzing sounds and bright flashes... BUT I never left it running for more than a few seconds... Ed Federmeyer
vevea@paideia.uchicago.edu (Jack L. Vevea) (03/24/89)
In article <24510@mirror.UUCP> garison@prism.TMC.COM (Gary Piatt) writes: >Ronald J. Notarius writes: >=>I received a COMB catalog in yesterday's mail. In it they advertise a Lisa 2. >=>Yes, a Lisa 2! At one time costing over $10,000, now only $999! > >I used to work for Visual Technology, a company that was growing faster I used to work for a Fortune 500 company, referred to hereafter as X***x to preserve anonymity and protect the guilty. As recently as three years ago, they found themselves in the unfortunate position of still having a huge inventory of X***x 820's on hand-- a horrible little 64k CPM machine. So they decided to try to unload them by selling them to employees at the special discount of about $2000-- extra if you wanted the 10-meg hard disk. Many people were foolish enough to actually _buy_ the things at that price; a year later, the rest were available from a salvage firm for about $100.00. Saepe fidelis.
root@spdyne.UUCP (03/26/89)
Ronald J. Notarius writes:
=>I received a COMB catalog in yesterday's mail. In it they advertise a Lisa 2
=>Yes, a Lisa 2! At one time costing over $10,000, now only $999!
I have a dumb question.... How close is the Lisa 2 to the Mac? I seem to
recall that it came with a hard disk, some sorta multi-tasking OS.... I
thought that it could run UNIX of some sort too...1K sounds good, but I don't
know very much at all about the machine... I'd like to get a Mac like computer
to run MicroSoft Word 3.0...[The Best Wisiwyg Word processer I have ever seen!]
Is it that much worse than a Mac SE?
Please respond via E-Mail to:
root@spdyne
-Thanks,
-Chertaberg@math.rutgers.edu (Hans Aberg) (03/27/89)
> I have a dumb question.... This is something for the group comp.sys.mac ... > How close is the Lisa 2 to the Mac? This is something for the group comp.sys.mac ... But the answer is that the Lisa has a different operationg system than the Mac's. There is a company that refurbishes Lisas, and supplies system software to make them Mac compatible. (Many apologizes to comp.misc readers for this infringement.) Hans Aberg, Matemathics aberg@math.rutgers.edu
learn@lafcol.UUCP (Dave Learn) (05/17/89)
About a week ago, I was reading soc.religion.christian, and decided to add my own two cents' worth of contribution. I went through the postnews routine, and ptried to post it. The computer said, "Soc.religion.christian is a moderated newsgroup, your article is being forwarded to the moderator." No problem. A few days later, I logged on and found about 243 letters all saying exactly the same things, "Soc.religion.chrisstian is moderated, please mail your article directly to the moderator." And a copy of my article was enclosed. I deleted them all, and eventually logged out. The next day there were 300. This kept going on, until yesterday, when I had over 400 appear overnight. I tried to erase them, but as fast as I erased them, more came in, until finally, my mailer collapsed under the load. It ended up this mail (all of it the same!) took up *one megabyte* of disk space here at lafcol. The computer department here finally had to change my userid, because I couldn't even access the stuff to erase it. Turns out, the article wasn't forwarded to the moderator, it was sent all around the worrld, like a regular article, and every USENET site on the planet was telling me I couldn't do that. Jeez -- one little article, and USENET goes to pieces... \ __/ dave learn \ (_ (_/ <- That's supposed to ___ be New Zealand "My boss is a / / (I'm kind of new to Jewish carpenter." /__/ computer art!!) o Rapture (RAP shur), n: A road trip you do not want to miss. ^^^
lenh@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Len Humbird) (08/29/89)
A few months ago, this newsgroup had several postings titled 'computer folklore.' Several were actually humorous, as I recall. To the point: did anyone save a copy of these articles? I would like to use some of them in a newsletter I publish for the local microcomputer user's group. Thanks ---Len Humbird lenh@iscuva.iscs.com Technical Writer ISC-Bunker Ramo Corporation Spokane, WA An Olivetti Company ---All opinions expressed here. Are my own?