Old Control Data Drives

[Chuck Guzis]

On 05/16/2015 02:50 PM, Billy Pettit wrote:

> Chuck,  I'll swap you for the time I was at CERN working on 627 (one
> inch) tape drives and some idiot rewound 24 of them at the same time.
> It was a gag they pulled on new operators.  It could take an hour
> before you could hear people talk again.

Running the Navy Audit tests for COBOL had a "short record" test that 
could get pretty loud, but I thought it was pretty cool, particularly if 
you left the door down.

Shades of "Anchors Aweigh".... :)

What really got on my nerves, though, was the machine floor at SVLOPS. 
You could have 6 or more machines on the same floor, high ceilings, and 
cinderblock walls with no sound absorbing anywhere.  Lots of white 
noise, I think, mostly from the tape drive vacuum pumps.  After about 4 
or 5 hours, you could find yourself shaking.  Eventually management 
started distributing earplugs (the Sorbothane yellow spongy ones).  That 
helped a lot.  You really did have to raise your voice quite a bit to be 
heard by a the guy standing 3 feet away.

--Chuck