6 Mar
2006
6 Mar
'06
9:24 a.m.
This was posted a few days ago on the TI-99/4A mailing list.
I thought a few people on here might get a laugh out of it! :)
Cheers,
Bryan
I found this, supposedly from an IBM manual.
"All parts should go together without forcing. You
must remember that the parts you are reassembling were
disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them
together again, there must be a reason. By all means,
do not use hammer."
-- IBM maintenance manual, 1975
Now what was the line from the TI Disk Memory System
controller manual? Something like "You can break off
this tab. Then you can throw away the card."
It was something like that in the original manual I
had,
in the section on installing the card in the PEB.
Whatever happened to a bit of dry humor in computer
hardware manuals? :)
6 Mar
6 Mar
7:05 p.m.
> Whatever happened to a bit of dry humor in
computer
> hardware manuals? :)
Another example is in some versions of the DEC RK05 maintenance manual,
in the section on cleaning the disk platter. This is from memory, so I'm
mis-quoting, but here goes...
'Dry dust can be removed by blowing by mouth. Do not spit on the disk'
And the Tektronix cartoons haev been mentioned many times before. My
favourite is on the CRT circut for the 564 storage 'socpe. There's a
cleaning lady kneeling on the screen-end of the CRT symbol, mopping up
water, presumably put there by the flood guns :-)
-tony
7:17 p.m.
Whatever happened to a bit of dry humor in computer
hardware manuals? :)
Strike "hardware". One of my favorites is the Prime Fortran manual
index vintage late 70's or early 80's, which contained (from memory)
the following three entries:
Circular reasoning - see proof by assumption
Proof by assumption - see petitio principii
Petitio principii - see circular reasoning
scattered about on several pages in alphabetical order.
De
9:05 p.m.
In message <200603070017.k270HVAl009020 at yagi.h-net.msu.edu>
Dennis Boone <drb at msu.edu> wrote:
Strike "hardware". One of my favorites is
the Prime Fortran manual
index vintage late 70's or early 80's, which contained (from memory)
the following three entries:
Circular reasoning - see proof by assumption
Proof by assumption - see petitio principii
Petitio principii - see circular reasoning
Some of the Borland Turbo Pascal manuals allegedly had something similar:
Infinite loop - see Loop, infinite
Loop, infinite - see Infinite loop
IIRC there were a couple more gems in there, but I can't remember any of
them...
--
Phil. | Kitsune: Acorn RiscPC SA202 64M+6G ViewFinder
philpem at dsl.pipex.com | Cheetah: Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxeV2 512M+100G
http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | Tiger: Toshiba SatPro4600 Celeron700 256M+40G
10:41 p.m.
Recursive, adj., see "recursive."
At 02:05 AM 3/7/2006 +0000, you wrote:
In message <200603070017.k270HVAl009020 at
yagi.h-net.msu.edu>
Dennis Boone <drb at msu.edu> wrote:
[Government]We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into
prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift
himself up by the handle. --Winston Churchill
--... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -...
tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio)
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43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square
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WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531
Strike "hardware". One of my favorites
is the Prime Fortran manual
index vintage late 70's or early 80's, which contained (from memory)
the following three entries:
Circular reasoning - see proof by assumption
Proof by assumption - see petitio principii
Petitio principii - see circular reasoning
Some of the Borland Turbo Pascal manuals allegedly had something similar:
Infinite loop - see Loop, infinite
Loop, infinite - see Infinite loop
IIRC there were a couple more gems in there, but I can't remember any of
them...
--
Phil. | Kitsune: Acorn RiscPC SA202 64M+6G ViewFinder
philpem at dsl.pipex.com | Cheetah: Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxeV2 512M+100G
http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | Tiger: Toshiba SatPro4600 Celeron700 256M+40G 
7 Mar
7 Mar
2:13 a.m.
Teo Zenios wrote:
Let's keep politics out of it, thanks. Aphorisms might be witty, but
they prove nothing but what you already believe.
Back on topic, Nick Tredennick, who did the microcode for the 68000 and
was the architect/microcoder for a u370 implementation, wrote a book
about his microcoding techniques on that u370 project. Nick is
outspoken and a natural contrarian apparently. In the tail end of his
book there is a glossary and there are a few funny entries. I don't
have the book with me, and I only recall two of them. One was something
like:
Methodology: strictly speaking, the study of methods.
Often misused by over educated snobs when what they
really mean to say is method.
The other I recall was like:
Testability: things you add to the design against your
will because someone important in the department said
you had to.
Tieing two threads together, he wasn't against testability of the system
-- the u370 was big on RAS -- but rather he thought functional
verification of the chip was the hard but right way to do things.
[Government]We
contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into
prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift
himself up by the handle. --Winston Churchill
--... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -...
Nice quote BTW 
7:11 a.m.
New subject: was Re: Do not use hammer; now value of a testbench
Jim Battle wrote:
Tieing two threads together, he wasn't against testability of the system
-- the u370 was big on RAS -- but rather he thought functional
verification of the chip was the hard but right way to do things.
no argument from me (I plan to go get the book - does he talk about the
nano code?), but i'd add there's no substitute for good baseline
simulation also.
Just got done finding a problem in a fpga (bus clash) which should have
been caught in simulation but instead passed all the simple functional
tests and only crashed during full-up testing with the linux kernel.
(and naturally everyone blamed the linux kernel :-) 'cept me)
-brad
9:36 a.m.
New subject: was Re: Do not use hammer; now value of a testbench
Brad Parker wrote:
Jim Battle wrote:
A tiny bio of him:
http://www.vintage.org/2004/main/bio.php?id=72
The book on amazon (out of print):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0135822971/002-4455590-2956861
The technical detail gets to a very low level, going through specific
PLAs. The real value, though, is that he kept a journal as the project
developed, and he divulges a lot of interesting details, such as the
staffing timeline, project politics and setbacks, the reasoning behind
certain design choices -- basically a lot of the whys and not just the
hows. On the other hand, don't think that the book is going to give you
sufficient information to clone the chip! Certain things he goes into a
length, others get skimmed in order to keep the book a reasonable size.
Tieing two threads together, he wasn't
against testability of the system
-- the u370 was big on RAS -- but rather he thought functional
verification of the chip was the hard but right way to do things.
no argument from me (I plan to go get the book - does he talk about the
nano code?), but i'd add there's no substitute for good baseline
simulation also.
Just got done finding a problem in a fpga (bus clash) which should have
been caught in simulation but instead passed all the simple functional
tests and only crashed during full-up testing with the linux kernel.
(and naturally everyone blamed the linux kernel :-) 'cept me)
-brad
15 Mar
15 Mar
1:03 p.m.
Bryan Pope wrote:
> Whatever happened to a bit of dry humor in computer
> hardware manuals? :)
The Coherent (unix clone) manuals had a few tidbits, most common of
which were the index entries for recursion ("(see recursion)") and
infinite loop ("see loop, infinite" which would reference "see infinite
loop"). Unfortunately I don't recall the more subtle ones.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
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