30 Jun
1999
30 Jun
'99
3:21 p.m.
Hello William:
In a message dated 6/30/99 10:33:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time, aw288(a)osfn.org
writes:
With big machines, tinkering was generally frowned
upon, especially with
the hardware.
I'll bet it was! I once caused an uproar at BP's MIS Dept. over some code I
wrote to batch transaction records from PCs to VAXen via ATT Mail ... nobody
told me the VAX would puke if it encountered a null in a data record . . .
and that was just _software_ . . . taught me a lesson: never rock the "big
iron" . . .
But nowadays, do those members of the group who have "big" computers out in
their barns experiment with them? Or just try to restore and preserve them?
After all, nothing (probably) really depends on the machine in your basement
. . . so no real chance of a summary execution . . . just curious . . .
Regards,
Glen Goodwin
0/0
1 Jul
1 Jul
5:53 a.m.
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5:14 p.m.
Glen Godwin wrote:
I'll bet it was! I once caused an uproar at
BP's MIS Dept. over some code I
wrote to batch transaction records from PCs to VAXen via ATT Mail ... nobody
told me the VAX would puke if it encountered a null in a data record . . .
and that was just _software_ . . . taught me a lesson: never rock the "big
iron" . . .
It could be worse. Something slightly similar happened to me, except that I
think I was using the vendor-supplied utilities.
The system in question was a VAX at Pomona College (a small school in
California). I was employed as an operator (= peon who separated and filed
prinouts and mounted 9-track tapes for backups, also solved general lab
problems with PCs and Macintoshes). I thought the backup program had
finished using a tape so I dismounted and rewound it. The backup program
had a total conniption fit, with annoying and incessant messages appearing
on my console and the system manager's console. Shortly after that, the
system manager had a conniption fit of his own. :) Pretty poor program
design, if you ask me.
Man, was that VAX ever overworked. Pomona's UNIX coverage was very limited
(a NeXT and a Sun running OpenLook, neither of which anyone knew how to use)
but in spite of that I decided then and there that I preferred UNIX to VMS.
In fairness, Harvey Mudd (engineering school, part of the same group of
colleges) had much better UNIX systems.
-- Derek
9305
days inactive
9306
days old
2 comments
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participants (3)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
dpeschel＠u.washington.edu -
Glenatacme＠aol.com