1 Jul
2011
1 Jul
'11
10:58 a.m.
IBM started out with typewriter repairmen who became unit record
equipment repairment who became mainframe repairmen.
Other thatn "grey away" and remembering which end of a 100' cable goes
to which storage director when you get there the system is pretty simple
and robust. They simply don't work when you swap them .
YOu could get in trouble when you had a controller to unit use where
there was a single cable, never saw what happ3ned if you took a 3803
tape controller to 3420 tape unit cable and ran it to a bus / tag
connector, but hopefully not flames.
as some guys around here who I have complained at about having to do a
lot of manual operations as root (from instruction sheets) and not
automating the stuff say "if you screw up you won't do it twice".
Or if you do it twice you didn't learn to be more careful the first time.
Jim
On 7/1/2011 10:31 AM, William Donzelli wrote:
I wonder why
they went that route... Seems kinda
kludgy. :)
That was the way back in the 1960s and 70s, when metal was cheap.
Burroughs did the same, as did DEC. CDC was different, using fairly
lightweight cables, but still with odd connectors.
I never understood why IBM made the Bus and Tag connectors
hermaphroditic and not keyed. I think all it did was create confusion.
--
Will