Photographing fiche (Was: DEC RD53 Manual

ALMOST. A long boring anecdote: In 1970, I worked for an on-site contractor at GSFC SSDC (Goddard Space Flight Center, Space Sciences Data Center, Bldg#26). One of the tasks that I was assigned was to rewrite a dozen CABINETS of punched cards of calcomp plotter (570?, 790?) programs to run on the Stromberg Carlson 4020 and Stromberg Data 4060. The Stromberg machines (in a building for which I didn't have clearance, and which I never physically saw) did direct output to 16mm and 35mm microfilm. I have no idea whether they had a fiche capability - my output arrived on 100 ft rolls of 16mm and 35mm B&W film. I was so lazy that instead of rewriting the software, I looked at the primitives that it called, and the primitives that that called, and the primitives that that called. When I got to the "bottom-most turtle" of the Calcomp library, I wrote a trivial SC/SD subroutine to do THAT (line segment, IIRC?). With the help of some of the other coders, I put together a small handful of 360 JCL to call the calcomp library AND the SC/SD library, but to call my subroutine instead of the Calcomp primitive subroutine. The entire room full of calcomp calling programs were working in weeks, instead of years. Since I was an on-site contractor, I received simultaneous commendations and reprimands. Nearly got a raise AND termination! Combined with many other "brownie points" from other peoples' work, the company was given a large bonus to distribute to the employees as they saw fit. If it were to have been equally distributed, it would have been almost a grand per employee. The company's algorithm for who got how much, netted me a frozen turkey for XMAS. I decided that disunirregardless of the current job situation, that it was time to move back to California. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com