kumard@sunybcs.UUCP (02/12/87)
I am surprised no one volunteered to tell our-side of the 1130 story. My undergrad school in India (Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS),Pilani) has had an 1130 since 1972. It has a 1403 printer. For a long long time (about 8 years!) it was the backbone of the CS Department and the School. All Academic computing (like student records) time-table scheduling, and student services were handled by this giant (The scholl has about 2500 students). I am greatful that it was my first machine. Simply because we were able to play with it as we liked. Here's a few stories (some of them were legends told to me by alumni): 1. One wonderd what would happen if you forced read a card with a giant hole punched in it. It was tried and the card reader jammed. 2. One used to sneak into the computer room at night to play with it. However, the operators kept a log of system usage by recording the meter-readings on all devices. A technique for resetting the meters back was figured out. After a night of hacking, they were reset. authorities used to wonder why the electricity bills were so high. 3. On one those nights, someone decided to write his own Operating System, to fool the operator. It was planted on the disk for the operator to load in the morning. He switches the machine, shoves in the Cold-start card, and the printer says, 1403: I feel sick today, put me off (keeps printing this repeatedly) (Operator thinks something is wrong, goes to switch it off) 1403: Oh! No, you can't put me off! (Operator starts to put the printer off-line) 1403: No, don't even try! ........and so one this kind of stuff went on until the operator got sick of it (after several power off, retries) and called in the services of the Chief of the Computer Center, who immediately know what had happened. Luckily he had a good sense of humor. 4. Someone got hold of this FORTRAN program that printed a lot of garbage for a minute. The sounds the printer made were the exact notes of the Indian National Anthem! After the third run, the printer chain gave up. The program deck was confiscated by the Chief. 5. With every such machine, the Chief also gets a reputation. This Chief had a reputation for tinkering with the machine. Once, he spent the whole day pullingthe 1403 apart, and by evening it was all over the room. There was a power cut (power cuts were normal there), everyone went out for a coffee. Chief lit a candle in the room and started fiddling. Power came back after 2 hours. The floor was clean and the 1403 stood in one piece with chief standing next to it. Asks thge operator to switch power on, and it worked. 6. The same chief installed a VLSI Floating Point Unit, lodged it in the Multiplexer housing, and incorporated it in the FORTRAN compiler in a 27-th pass (it already had 26 passes). And there's tons more of that stuff!!! Deepak. -- CSNET : kumard@buffalo | ARPA : kumard%buffalo@csnet-relay | BITNET : kumard@sunybcs |
larry@kitty.UUCP (02/12/87)
In article <2319@sunybcs.UUCP>, kumard@sunybcs.UUCP (Deepak Kumar) writes: > ... > 1. One wonderd what would happen if you forced read a card > with a giant hole punched in it. It was tried and the > card reader jammed. At my college a favorite stunt was to punch cards with all rows and columns punched - leaving a Swiss cheese card with little mechanical strength - but undetectable when viewed from the outside of a deck. (It was also neat to hear the sound of a 513 reproducer when duplicating these "cards".) There is no way that a card like this could pass through any 1402 or unit record equipment reader without causing a nasty jam. A "fun" thing to do was to place some cards punched like this in some unsuspecting person's program deck. This kind of jam was _worse_ that the traditional "accordian" card jam; it was usually Card Saw Time. Anyone remember the little card saws for use in severe card jams? > 2. One used to sneak into the computer room at night to play > with it. However, the operators kept a log of system usage > by recording the meter-readings on all devices. > A technique for resetting the meters back was figured out. While my first hands-on computer experience was with a 1401 used by a particular department, my college had a 7094 as the computing center mainframe. This beast ran a tape operating system called IBSYS. All students, staff and faculty authorized to submit jobs were issued a supply of job cards having prepunched fields for job number, user id and department, and time limit. Students obviously wanted more than their allocated cpu time, but the administration thought it had licked the problem of job card counterfeiting (i.e., with a longer cpu time limit) by using cards that were on a special colored and striped stock; needless to say, this blank card stock was well "guarded". However, for enterprising students there was a way around this situation: Since the stripes never covered the columns where the time limit was punched, conventional colored card chad could be carefully glued to cover the zero punches in the tens and hundred minutes columns - thereby permitting the card to be repunched with a higher time limit! A good job of covering the zero punches was difficult to detect. Another "fun" thing to do was plant a card in some victim's program deck which was punched as ``$STOP'' - the IBSYS JCL command that halted the the system. After this became a chronic "problem", IBSYS was patched to change this command to something else. > 4. Someone got hold of this FORTRAN program that printed a lot > of garbage for a minute. The sounds the printer made were > the exact notes of the Indian National Anthem! After the > third run, the printer chain gave up. An IBM CE gave me an Autocoder program that ran on the 1401 and played the U.S. national anthem. It always amazed me how someone had the _time_ to determine the character sequences required to generate specific musical notes, and then put it all together in the proper rhythm for a song! <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York <> UUCP: {allegra|boulder|decvax|nike|rocksanne|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry <> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/ <> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?"
toma@tekgvs.UUCP (02/13/87)
In article <1596@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes: > > While my first hands-on computer experience was with a 1401 used >by a particular department, my college had a 7094 as the computing center >mainframe. This beast ran a tape operating system called IBSYS. All >students, staff and faculty authorized to submit jobs were issued a supply >of job cards having prepunched fields for job number, user id and department, >and time limit. Students obviously wanted more than their allocated cpu time, >but the administration thought it had licked the problem of job card >counterfeiting (i.e., with a longer cpu time limit) by using cards that were >on a special colored and striped stock; needless to say, this blank card >stock was well "guarded". > However, for enterprising students there was a way around this >situation: Since the stripes never covered the columns where the time limit >was punched, conventional colored card chad could be carefully glued to >cover the zero punches in the tens and hundred minutes columns - thereby >permitting the card to be repunched with a higher time limit! A good job >of covering the zero punches was difficult to detect. I had the same problem, needing to create an "illegal" job card. Where I was at the time (Cornell, late 60's) had a priority system, and during the day they would not load jobs that were below a certain priority (that mere under- grads did not have!). I solved the problem (and actually got away with it for a while) by placing a dummy job at the high priority, with a real Job Card, in front of my real job, with a job card made of regular stock. The system would bounce the phoney job but then execute my real, low priority job. //JOB...PRI=6 (real job card) // //JOB...PRI=4 (regular stock) //EXEC ... // Additional comment: I never liked using terminals until display oriented editors appeared. It was so much easier to edit a deck of cards (now that was real WYSIWYG!). Tom Almy Tektronix (Where is a keypunch now that we need it?)
ctp@pop.UUCP (02/13/87)
In article <1596@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes: >... Anyone remember the little card saws >for use in severe card jams? > ><> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York ><> UUCP: {allegra|boulder|decvax|nike|rocksanne|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry ><> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/ ><> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?" REMEMBER! I still have one! Along with a core plane from the IBM 1620 that I took my first Computer Science course on. Our big charge was to write programs that would cause all the lights on the console to come on. I really miss all those lights. Back then it was easy to tell when you were is a non-terminating loop. The light pattern just kept repeating. ----- Clyde T. Poole, Computing Resources Manager ARPA: ctp@sally.utexas.edu VOICE: (512) 471-9551 UUCP: {harvard,ihnp4,seismo}!ut-sally!ctp CIS: 75226,3135 Overland: UT at Austin, Department of Computer Sciences Taylor Hall 2.124, Austin, TX 78712-1188 "Life is a bitch ... and then you die"
terryl@tekcrl.UUCP (02/13/87)
In article <1596@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes: >In article <2319@sunybcs.UUCP>, kumard@sunybcs.UUCP (Deepak Kumar) writes: >> 4. Someone got hold of this FORTRAN program that printed a lot >> of garbage for a minute. The sounds the printer made were >> the exact notes of the Indian National Anthem! After the >> third run, the printer chain gave up. > > An IBM CE gave me an Autocoder program that ran on the 1401 and >played the U.S. national anthem. It always amazed me how someone had >the _time_ to determine the character sequences required to generate >specific musical notes, and then put it all together in the proper >rhythm for a song! [ Gee, I hope I'm not showing my age by saying my first computer interaction was with an 1130 with a 026 keypunch(-;!!!!] Back in my undergraduate days, I knew someone who had written a program that, if one put an AM radio on the 1130 console, would play electronic music through the radio from the RF generated by th3 1130. Very impressive (at the time, anyway). This would only work if the 1130 was in a room by itself, so the radio would only pick up the RF from the 1130. This acquainance had actually transcribed about 20-30 songs, and punched them into cards for the data input into the program.
naftoli@aecom.UUCP (02/15/87)
In article <1596@kitty.UUCP>, larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes: > At my college a favorite stunt was to punch cards with all rows > and columns punched... We used to do the same thing, except that it had a useful purpose. We had a program that would punch all the holes in a stack of cards. The little punchouts made for fine confetti at a variety of celebrations. Of course, the name of the program was "mulch." We have the 1130 sitting around in a closet somewhere waiting for the price of gold to go up (no kidding). Then, it's off to the smelting shop. I still have the "parity check" light for old times sake. -- Robert N. Berlinger Systems Analyst, Scientific Computing Center Compuserve: 73047,741 Albert Einstein College of Medicine Easylink: 62956067 UUCP: ...{philabs,cucard,pegasus,rocky2}!aecom!naftoli GEnie: R.Berlinger
dave@onfcanim.UUCP (02/16/87)
In article <902@aecom.UUCP> naftoli@aecom.UUCP (Robert N. Berlinger) writes: > >We had a program that would punch all the holes in a stack of cards. >The little punchouts made for fine confetti at a variety of celebrations. >Of course, the name of the program was "mulch." Only if you don't like the people it got thrown on - that chad has *sharp* corners. But there were many uses for the punched-out cards: I used to have a deck of them sitting on my desk (with normal-looking cards on the faces) waiting for someone to pick it up. Someone old enough to have worked with cards was always startled that the deck was about half the weight they were expecting. At Brock University, some students taped the punched-out cards into strips and hung them as curtains for their office windows.
ken@argus.UUCP (02/16/87)
In article <1596@kitty.UUCP>, larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes: > An IBM CE gave me an Autocoder program that ran on the 1401 and > played the U.S. national anthem. It always amazed me how someone had > the _time_ to determine the character sequences required to generate > specific musical notes, and then put it all together in the proper > rhythm for a song! Oh my god, I forgot all about the "MUSIC" program for the IBM 1130. I tried for almost a week to figure out what the#$%@#% it was doing. I found out when someone left a radio in the room and I ran the program. > <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York -- Kenneth Ng: Post office: NJIT - CCCC, Newark New Jersey 07102 uucp !ihnp4!allegra!bellcore!argus!ken *** WARNING: NOT ken@bellcore.uucp *** bitnet(prefered) ken@orion.bitnet Gillian: "Are you sure you won't change your mind?" Spock: "Is there something wrong with the one I have?"
uusgta@sw1e.UUCP (02/16/87)
> At my college a favorite stunt was to punch cards with all rows > and columns punched - leaving a Swiss cheese card with little mechanical > strength - but undetectable when viewed from the outside of a deck. (It > was also neat to hear the sound of a 513 reproducer when duplicating these > "cards".) My first introduction to the IBM portapunch (a plastic device used to hold perforated punchcards so you could, by hand, push out the holes with a stylus) was when a desperate social sciences type came into my office asking for new cards for this, this .. thing?! It turned out that what he really needed was copies of one card & then to ad two punches, punches that a cardpunch could make Well I was pretty proud of myself, having been one of the last people on the earth's face required to actually use the 029. I grabbed his deck, loaded it alternately with blank cards, hit dup, and the brushes popped out every hole on that perforated card. Talk about one mad grad student. He didn't even care that the technology was too old and useless for me to held responsible for this action. -- # ---Tom Adams--- # {bellcore,ihnp4}!sw1e!uusgta St. Louis MO 314-235-4237 # Opinions expressed here are mine, not those of Southwestern Bell Telephone
phil@osiris.UUCP (02/16/87)
Yes, I remember card saws. Had to use 'em all the time on the card reader on a 370/135 RJE station (I'm just a couple of seasons later than most of these computer paleontologists) and the 029 keypunches, particularly when I (or one of my friends) put a "dup all" card on the keypunch drum and left an "all-punched" card in the bottom of the hopper as a booby trap. The card saws made great picks for getting into the file cabinets, too. In article <1596@kitty.UUCP>, larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes: > In article <2319@sunybcs.UUCP>, kumard@sunybcs.UUCP (Deepak Kumar) writes: > > 4. Someone got hold of this FORTRAN program that printed a lot > > of garbage for a minute. The sounds the printer made were > > the exact notes of the Indian National Anthem! After the > > third run, the printer chain gave up. > > An IBM CE gave me an Autocoder program that ran on the 1401 and > played the U.S. national anthem. It always amazed me how someone had > the _time_ to determine the character sequences required to generate > specific musical notes, and then put it all together in the proper > rhythm for a song! A DEC CE who (until about 1978) worked on a PDP-8 I used to use had an RX01 floppy full of programs which would play music on the beast. You listened to the music by putting an AM radio near the backplane and tuning it to somewhere in the upper third (I believe) of the dial... ...!decvax!decuac - Phil Kos \ The Johns Hopkins Hospital ...!seismo!mimsy - -> !aplcen!osiris!phil Baltimore, MD / ...!allegra!mimsy - "We're going to Greece!" "And swim the English Channel?" "No, to ancient Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sang and stroked the wine-dark sea in the temple by the moonlight wah-da-do-dah." "What?" - F. Theater
artm@phred.UUCP (02/17/87)
In article <1400@tekcrl.TEK.COM> terryl@tekcrl.tek.com writes: > > Back in my undergraduate days, I knew someone who had written a >program that, if one put an AM radio on the 1130 console, would play >electronic music through the radio from the RF generated by th3 1130. >Very impressive (at the time, anyway). This would only work if the >1130 was in a room by itself, so the radio would only pick up the RF >from the 1130. This acquainance had actually transcribed about 20-30 >songs, and punched them into cards for the data input into the program. There actually used to be available from DECUS a program written in assembler for the PDP9 (which could thus be hacked to run on the PDP15) to cycle the console lights so that a radio placed nearby would play some Bach piece in full four-part harmony. And to think the folks playing with their micros with off-the-shelf ployphonic synthesizer boards think they're doing something clever... ...................................................................... Art Marriott tikal!phred!artm ...................................................................... My life isn't a soap opera. It's a situation comedy.
res@ihlpl.UUCP (02/18/87)
In article <1596@kitty.UUCP>, larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes: > At my college a favorite stunt was to punch cards with all rows > and columns punched - leaving a Swiss cheese card with little mechanical > strength - but undetectable when viewed from the outside of a deck. (It > was also neat to hear the sound of a 513 reproducer when duplicating these > "cards".) Ah yes ... memories this comment brings back of my summer job as a tab operator in a local business. There was a programmer who liked to slip one of these 80x12 cards into the decks he brought over to have duplicated. He seemed to get his jollies listening to the gang punch as it went crunch crunch KWHAM <floor shakes dramatically here crunch crunch as it reproduced his deck. Once he put a number of them into a deck, one after the other. The sound effects went something like crunch crunch KWHAM <floor shakes dramatically here KWHAM <floor shakes dramatically here again KWHAM <floor shakes dramatically here again plink <long silence> Afterwards we found that some of the chad had jammed between two of the punch dies and resulted in two of the dies snapping. The gangpunch was dead for about three days until all of the necessary parts could be found and brought to the site. Nobody ratted on the programmer, but he never slipped another 80x12 card into one of his decks again! Rich Strebendt ...!ihnp4!iwsl6!res
ron@brl-sem.UUCP (02/19/87)
In article <1845@ihlpl.ATT.COM>, res@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Rich Strebendt @ AT&T Information Systems - Indian Hill West; formerly) writes: > There was a programmer who liked to slip one of these 80x12 cards into > the decks he brought over to have duplicated. He seemed to get his > jollies listening to the gang punch as it went The machine is the reproducing punch, which is capable of gangpunching but that is not card duplication as you described. Gangpunching is punching columns from a previous card into successive cards. For real slick operations, you could program when to switch masters (interspersed master gangpunching). Ah, it brings back such memories. I used to program those things. My favorite feature is that if you wanted machine readable output from the 402 accounting machine, you dragged this big 80x12 contact plug over to the 514 and punched some cards. -Ron
rsweeney@dasys1.UUCP (02/21/87)
>A DEC CE who (until about 1978) worked on a PDP-8 I used to use had an >RX01 floppy full of programs which would play music on the beast. You >listened to the music by putting an AM radio near the backplane and >tuning it to somewhere in the upper third (I believe) of the dial... >Phil Kos \ Before the FCC AM interference regulations were passed, you used to be able to do this sort of thing with just about any machine. I remember playing early TRS-80 games, like "Invasion Force", and using a large AM radio placed near the machine to produce appropriate sound effects. In fact, TRS-80 programmers got so good at producing the correct sound-creating loops that some of the later games actually had VOICE effects! -- Robert Sweeney {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!\ Datamerica Systems {harpo,bellcore,cmcl2}!cucard!dasys1!rsweeney New York, NY. USA {philabs}!tg!/ "I AM NOT A NUMBER - I AM A FREE MAN!"
tk@rpiacm.UUCP (02/26/87)
In article <290@dasys1.UUCP>, rsweeney@dasys1.UUCP (Robert Sweeney) writes: > Before the FCC AM interference regulations were passed, you used to > be able to do this sort of thing with just about any machine. > I remember playing early TRS-80 games, like "Invasion Force", > and using a large AM radio placed near the machine to produce > appropriate sound effects. In fact, TRS-80 programmers got so good > at producing the correct sound-creating loops that some of the later > games actually had VOICE effects! Yes - I still have my TRS-80 Model I and remember the sound effects that were produced in that manner. However, it wasn't QUITE as impressive as it might seem. What was really going on was that the game sent out the sound in the form of square wave pulses to the cassette port (which is why you could get clearer sound by hooking up a speaker to the AUX jack). It just happened to be true that the RFI from the machine was bad enough to also make those sounds audible on an unused AM frequency... -- Ron Frederick ..!seismo!rpics!rpiacm!tk rpiacm!tk@CSV.RPI.EDU USERE9VY@RPITSMTS.BITNET
hbb@mtx5d.UUCP (02/26/87)
Although this doesn't quite rank with the more ingenious anecdotes
already posted, I have a recollection to contribute to the pot.
At my Alma Mater (Yeshiva University in N.Y.) the student computer
room was (is?) located in the science building which was closed on
weekends (and I mean closed, as in locked and with no heat during the
winter - brrrrr!.) But the University had it's own computer room in
the same building which had to be in operation from Sunday through
Friday (they gave him heat, though.)
At night and on weekends the operator could gain access to the building by
operating an electronic combination lock on a side entrance. Somehow,
the students always found out the combination and entered the building
to use the computer room (the university policy then was that no students
were permitted in that building when it was "closed" due to insurance
requirements, etc so the students never got the combination through
"proper" channels.)
Well, in N.Y. during the winter a brick building without heat could
chill a person right down to the bone. Fortunately we had an IBM 1130.
Even when the students discovered the UNIX OS, they still needed the
IBM 1130 - those things made great space heaters!
--
Harlan B. Braude
{most "backbone" sites}!mtx5d!hbbjohn@moncol.UUCP (03/04/87)
In article <828@mtx5d.UUCP> hbb@mtx5d.UUCP writes: >Although this doesn't quite rank with the more ingenious anecdotes >already posted, I have a recollection to contribute to the pot. > >Well, in N.Y. during the winter a brick building without heat could >chill a person right down to the bone. Fortunately we had an IBM 1130. >Even when the students discovered the UNIX OS, they still needed the >IBM 1130 - those things made great space heaters! There was a few months between when we last used our 1130 and when it was hauled away for scrap. During that time, the student operators had a pizza party in the same room where the 1130 resided. As I recall, we kept the pizzas warm by firing up the 1130 and putting the boxes of pizza inside the 1132 printer. Never have found a better pizza warmer... -- Name: John Ruschmeyer US Mail: Monmouth College, W. Long Branch, NJ 07764 Phone: (201) 571-3557 UUCP: ...!vax135!petsd!moncol!john ...!princeton!moncol!john ...!pesnta!moncol!john Is this article <adjective> or what???