What's the history of this group? Are we discussing folklore in here?
I think often we are not. (Not a complaint.)

On Wed, 21 Feb 2024 19:55:16 -0300, Julieta Shem wrote:
>
> What's the history of this group? Are we discussing folklore in here?
> I think often we are not. (Not a complaint.)

It is folklore. But as so often people tend to deviate from a topic. This
probably happens in all groups.

I remember a even flamewar in alt.test some decades ago...
--
Andreas

https://ankman.de/

Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> writes:

> On Wed, 21 Feb 2024 19:55:16 -0300, Julieta Shem wrote:
>>
>> What's the history of this group? Are we discussing folklore in here?
>> I think often we are not. (Not a complaint.)
>
> It is folklore. But as so often people tend to deviate from a topic. This
> probably happens in all groups.
>
> I remember a even flamewar in alt.test some decades ago...

Lol. What happened there? Someone got upset because people were
chatting in a group where we should just do very serious tests? :)

On 21.02.2024 um 19:55 Uhr Julieta Shem wrote:

> What's the history of this group? Are we discussing folklore in here?

Discussions about historic computer stuff.
Sometimes also about old technology that is still in use.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to muell456@cartoonies.org

On Wed, 21 Feb 2024 19:55:16 -0300
Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> wrote:

> What's the history of this group? Are we discussing folklore in here?
> I think often we are not. (Not a complaint.)

A long time ago in a ... this group started out as old-timers
swapping war stories from the days of big iron (nothing less than twenty
years old was the original guideline back in the 90s). Most of the regulars
ran out of war stories decades ago and we're losing the older old-timers too
but we keep on nattering about anything and everything. Some while back it
was suggested that a.f.c. really stands for the auld farts of computing.

Now if you have any good war stories from the days of big iron
bring them on.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
For forms of government let fools contest
Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

According to Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>:
> Now if you have any good war stories from the days of big iron
>bring them on.

Back around 1970, this FORTRAN program would crash OS/360:

CALL MAIN
END

Please do not ask me why I know that.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On 2024-02-22, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 21 Feb 2024 19:55:16 -0300, Julieta Shem wrote:
>
>> What's the history of this group? Are we discussing folklore in here?
>> I think often we are not. (Not a complaint.)
>
> It is folklore. But as so often people tend to deviate from a topic. This
> probably happens in all groups.
>
> I remember a even flamewar in alt.test some decades ago...

Thread drift is an honoured tradition in this newsfroup.
And I say this as a proud member of the Non-Sequitur Society:
We might not make sense, but we do like pizza.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | The Internet is like a big city:
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | it has plenty of bright lights and
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | excitement, but also dark alleys
/ \ if you read it the right way. | down which the unwary get mugged.

On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 16:30:56 -0000 (UTC), John Levine
<johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>According to Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>:
>> Now if you have any good war stories from the days of big iron
>>bring them on.
>
>Back around 1970, this FORTRAN program would crash OS/360:
>
> CALL MAIN
> END
>
>Please do not ask me why I know that.

Okay, I wont.
--
Jim

On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 19:46:07 GMT
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

> Thread drift is an honoured tradition in this newsfroup.

Indeed it was once known as the home of thread drift - or on at
least one occasion drifting threads.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
For forms of government let fools contest
Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

According to D.J. <chucktheouch@gmnol.com>:
>>Back around 1970, this FORTRAN program would crash OS/360:
>>
>> CALL MAIN
>> END
>>
>>Please do not ask me why I know that.
>
>Okay, I wont.

When a FORTRAN program started up, it made a bunch of system calls to
catch arithmetic exceptions and otherwise set up the environment. It
saved the previous environment so it could resture it after the
program returned. The amount of system space for that save/restore
stuff was small, but how many times was one program likely to do that?

Except that MAIN was the default name for the FORTRAN main program,
so each time it was called, it did the save process, the system
ran out of space, and, oops.

Or, um, so I've heard.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 01:00:44 -0300, Julieta Shem wrote:
>
> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> writes:
>
>> I remember a even flamewar in alt.test some decades ago...
>
> Lol. What happened there? Someone got upset because people were
> chatting in a group where we should just do very serious tests? :)

Cannot remember the topic. Someone was burning a list of email addresses
of scammers. Someone else (probably a scammer been hit) complaint.
--
Andreas

On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 22:35:03 -0000 (UTC), John Levine
<johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>According to D.J. <chucktheouch@gmnol.com>:
>>>Back around 1970, this FORTRAN program would crash OS/360:
>>>
>>> CALL MAIN
>>> END
>>>
>>>Please do not ask me why I know that.
>>
>>Okay, I wont.
>
>When a FORTRAN program started up, it made a bunch of system calls to
>catch arithmetic exceptions and otherwise set up the environment. It
>saved the previous environment so it could resture it after the
>program returned. The amount of system space for that save/restore
>stuff was small, but how many times was one program likely to do that?
>
>Except that MAIN was the default name for the FORTRAN main program,
>so each time it was called, it did the save process, the system
>ran out of space, and, oops.
>
>Or, um, so I've heard.

I haven't heard that one. Thanks, I think.
--
Jim

jgd@cix.co.uk (John Dallman) writes:
>This just copied a bunch of large files whose contents were very much
>like noise (gziped debug-compiled libraries for an obsolete platform)
>back and forth a lot, periodically comparing them.

I am sometimes moving the contents of old drives to new drives.
One day it occured to me that the program I use for copying
does not actually compare the files after copying. So I wrote a
Python program to verify my copies (actually moves), and so far
I already have found some differences! My Python program will
now copy such files again and again, until they compare equal.
Next step: I'll write a GUI for my Python program and then I'll
use it whenever I want to copy or move a lot!

On Fri, 23 Feb 2024, John Dallman wrote:

> In article <20240222081328.9a3efea82299c9896d6d33c2@eircom.net>,
> steveo@eircom.net (Ahem A Rivet's Shot) wrote:
>
>> Now if you have any good war stories from the days of big iron
>> bring them on.
>
> Not big iron, but I did once get the job of writing software to break the
> company's hardware.

That reminds me of another story...

Many years ago, or decades, when the beard was not yet grey, I was
responsible for setting up a lab environment with a few servers,
switches and that's about it.

So after some installing and configuring, I discover that one server
refuses to connect to the network. I check the server configuration,
nothing, I check the switch, nothing, reboot, restart, remove interface,
add interface.

What to do?

Of course the error must be the cable! Said and done.

So I found a box with unopened cables, pulled out the cable, connected,
and...

no connection. Re-check everything, settings, switch, reboot, restart,
nothing. I reinstalled the server, nothing.

So I went to lunch.

After I came back a colleague told me, "oh the server, I fixed it!" and
I asked "what was the problem?" and he responded "the cable, I just
switched the cable!".

So _two_ broken cables after each other, and the second cable came
broken from the manufacturer!!

Best regards,
Daniel

On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:13:28 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

> Now if you have any good war stories from the days of big iron
> bring them on.

OK, time for another.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
This follows on from the story in my previous post, and it's about the
loader. This was a joint effort between (I think) two or three of us.

Writing subsystems (see before) was great fun. They could only be done in
assembler, and then they had to be put in a place where they could be
loaded. The only place the system was set up to find them was a particular
area on 'disc 2'. We could copy our programs there, and they could then be
loaded simply by typing their name.

We got up to various antics with subsystems, which eventually resulted in
special restrictions being imposed on where one could copy files. Disc 2
was off limits; it wasn't technically possible to put files there except
from a batch job (too traceable) or the operator's console. So we were
stopped in our tracks.

But not for long. This is where BASIC comes in. The BASIC system had been
written locally (as had the entire online system) but of course it was
rather limited by the available space for each user (a bit less than 1000
(24 bit) words each). The BASIC system lived in a 'common program' memory
area which was separate from that, as indeed did all subsystems.

Because of the space limitations, one could generate a 'BASIC library'.
Bear in mind that BASIC itself compiled to real code. One could write a
load of BASIC, using high line numbers. A special command generated a text
file as output; this file consisted of a stream of octal numbers
representing compiled code. This could be fed to the assembler (it was
syntactically valid for that) and turned into a callable library, which
could be put somewhere that a BASIC user could access it. It was then
possible to call up that library, and use the subroutines in it from one's
own BASIC programs, the library code being loaded into the common program
area, not using up the user's own space. You just had to know the line
numbers for the subroutines in the library, as they weren't visible when
listing your BASIC program.

So, the hack was this. We wrote a few lines of BASIC based at (say) line
10000. Then we generated the source for the library, as usual. At this
point, said source was edited to add rather more assembler - in fact, a
program loader. The 'library' was then assembled and put in a suitable
place on disc.

Using this was simple. One merely ran BASIC, and loaded the hacked
library. Then a command such as:

GOTO 10000

was issued. That entered and ran the loader, which prompted with:

ENTER PROGRAM TO LOAD:

The name of your subsystem (e.g. the one to pre-empt the card reader) was
then typed. Hit the carriage return key, and you'd be in your program.

I don't think we ever got caught with that. The main perpetrators were me
and a guy who ended up being head of software - the job of the guy we were
hiding it all from at the time. And I ended up managing the next
mainframe.

---------------------------------------------------

--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:13:28 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>
>> Now if you have any good war stories from the days of big iron
>> bring them on.
>
> OK, time for another.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> This follows on from the story in my previous post, and it's about the
> loader. This was a joint effort between (I think) two or three of us.
>
> Writing subsystems (see before) was great fun. They could only be done in
> assembler, and then they had to be put in a place where they could be
> loaded. The only place the system was set up to find them was a particular
> area on 'disc 2'. We could copy our programs there, and they could then be
> loaded simply by typing their name.
>
> We got up to various antics with subsystems, which eventually resulted in
> special restrictions being imposed on where one could copy files. Disc 2
> was off limits; it wasn't technically possible to put files there except
> from a batch job (too traceable) or the operator's console. So we were
> stopped in our tracks.
>
> But not for long. This is where BASIC comes in. The BASIC system had been
> written locally (as had the entire online system) but of course it was
> rather limited by the available space for each user (a bit less than 1000
> (24 bit) words each). The BASIC system lived in a 'common program' memory
> area which was separate from that, as indeed did all subsystems.
>
> Because of the space limitations, one could generate a 'BASIC library'.
> Bear in mind that BASIC itself compiled to real code. One could write a
> load of BASIC, using high line numbers. A special command generated a text
> file as output; this file consisted of a stream of octal numbers
> representing compiled code. This could be fed to the assembler (it was
> syntactically valid for that) and turned into a callable library, which
> could be put somewhere that a BASIC user could access it. It was then
> possible to call up that library, and use the subroutines in it from one's
> own BASIC programs, the library code being loaded into the common program
> area, not using up the user's own space. You just had to know the line
> numbers for the subroutines in the library, as they weren't visible when
> listing your BASIC program.
>
> So, the hack was this. We wrote a few lines of BASIC based at (say) line
> 10000. Then we generated the source for the library, as usual. At this
> point, said source was edited to add rather more assembler - in fact, a
> program loader. The 'library' was then assembled and put in a suitable
> place on disc.
>
> Using this was simple. One merely ran BASIC, and loaded the hacked
> library. Then a command such as:
>
> GOTO 10000
>
> was issued. That entered and ran the loader, which prompted with:
>
> ENTER PROGRAM TO LOAD:
>
> The name of your subsystem (e.g. the one to pre-empt the card reader) was
> then typed. Hit the carriage return key, and you'd be in your program.
>
> I don't think we ever got caught with that. The main perpetrators were me
> and a guy who ended up being head of software - the job of the guy we were
> hiding it all from at the time. And I ended up managing the next
> mainframe.

Good times. It’s no fun doing that kind of stuff on your own PC.

--
Pete

On Fri, 23 Feb 2024 23:03:54 +0100
D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

> That reminds me of another story...
>
> Many years ago, or decades, when the beard was not yet grey, I was

One that nobody ever got to the bottom of from a similar point in
time. I was in a small "vertical market" outfit writing CP/M and MPM based
applications - our development system developed tape problems so service
call ...

Engineer comes out, replaces tape drive - problems remain, replaces
controller board and cables - problems remain ...

Eventually every component in the case (a simple 19", 4U steel
box) had been replaced (in fact swapped from an identical machine) without
curing the problems and all the old components assembled in the other case
worked perfectly. Considerable experimentation failed to change this state
of affairs.

With great puzzlement he pronounced the problem cured by swapping
the case!

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
For forms of government let fools contest
Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

On Fri, 23 Feb 2024 22:28:53 +0000, Bob Eager wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:13:28 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>
>> Now if you have any good war stories from the days of big iron
>> bring them on.
>
> OK, time for another.

(trimmed)

There is a bit of a postscript to my previously detailed exploits.

This happened nearly 30 years after the previously mentioned events. I was
hosting a retirement dinner for several staff, all of whom had been around
since I was an undergraduate. One of the guests was the former system
software manager, who had been one of the people who nearly caught us. I
am pretty sure he knew who was responsible, even if he couldn't prove it.
He always had a dry sense of humour.

Of course, we got chatting (he had been my boss when I had a part time
job), and he asked what I was doing now. I replied that I had been
teaching there for many years. He asked what I taught, and I said my
primary interest was operating systems.

His droll reply was "Why am I not surprised?"

--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> writes:

[...]

> This happened nearly 30 years after the previously mentioned events. I was
> hosting a retirement dinner for several staff, all of whom had been around
> since I was an undergraduate. One of the guests was the former system
> software manager, who had been one of the people who nearly caught us. I
> am pretty sure he knew who was responsible, even if he couldn't prove it.
> He always had a dry sense of humour.
>
> Of course, we got chatting (he had been my boss when I had a part time
> job), and he asked what I was doing now. I replied that I had been
> teaching there for many years. He asked what I taught, and I said my
> primary interest was operating systems.
>
> His droll reply was "Why am I not surprised?"

Lol! This confirms the conjecture that most perpetrators want to be
caught---telling the story is irresistible.

On Fri, 23 Feb 2024 18:38:32 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Good times. It’s no fun doing that kind of stuff on your own PC.

Escaping to the hypervisor from a cloud VM OTOH ... But these days
that sort of thing gets taken rather seriously so best to resist.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
For forms of government let fools contest
Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

On Sat, 24 Feb 2024, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Feb 2024 23:03:54 +0100
> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>> That reminds me of another story...
>>
>> Many years ago, or decades, when the beard was not yet grey, I was
>
> One that nobody ever got to the bottom of from a similar point in
> time. I was in a small "vertical market" outfit writing CP/M and MPM based
> applications - our development system developed tape problems so service
> call ...
>
> Engineer comes out, replaces tape drive - problems remain, replaces
> controller board and cables - problems remain ...
>
> Eventually every component in the case (a simple 19", 4U steel
> box) had been replaced (in fact swapped from an identical machine) without
> curing the problems and all the old components assembled in the other case
> worked perfectly. Considerable experimentation failed to change this state
> of affairs.
>
> With great puzzlement he pronounced the problem cured by swapping
> the case!
>
>

Fascinating! Our dear machines do seem to have a life of their own
sometimes!

On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 11:58 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
jgd@cix.co.uk (John Dallman) wrote:

> In article <20240224112941.e2a43d397d297545c98f60b7@eircom.net>,
> steveo@eircom.net (Ahem A Rivet's Shot) wrote:
>
> > With great puzzlement he pronounced the problem cured by swapping
> > the case!
>
> Were there, perchance, cable sockets that were part of the case?

Nope they were in the PSU for mains and the serial port boards for
the rest.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
For forms of government let fools contest
Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

> With great puzzlement he pronounced the problem cured by swapping
> the case!

Reminiscent of MIT's "magic" / "more magic" switch.

De

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:

> Engineer comes out, replaces tape drive - problems remain, replaces
> controller board and cables - problems remain ...
>
> Eventually every component in the case (a simple 19", 4U steel
> box) had been replaced (in fact swapped from an identical machine) without
> curing the problems and all the old components assembled in the other case
> worked perfectly. Considerable experimentation failed to change this state
> of affairs.
>
> With great puzzlement he pronounced the problem cured by swapping
> the case!

A resonant clue from Martha Grimes? (q.g.)

https://caseisalteredpinner.co.uk/

:-)

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> schrieb:
> On Fri, 23 Feb 2024 23:03:54 +0100
> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>> That reminds me of another story...
>>
>> Many years ago, or decades, when the beard was not yet grey, I was
>
> One that nobody ever got to the bottom of from a similar point in
> time. I was in a small "vertical market" outfit writing CP/M and MPM based
> applications - our development system developed tape problems so service
> call ...
>
> Engineer comes out, replaces tape drive - problems remain, replaces
> controller board and cables - problems remain ...
>
> Eventually every component in the case (a simple 19", 4U steel
> box) had been replaced (in fact swapped from an identical machine) without
> curing the problems and all the old components assembled in the other case
> worked perfectly. Considerable experimentation failed to change this state
> of affairs.
>
> With great puzzlement he pronounced the problem cured by swapping
> the case!

Maybe it wasn't swapping, but removing and re-attaching grounding
cables, the original case would have worked as well.