Pat I followed up on Steve's archived posts from the last time this topic flared up. It's clear I misunderstood his short phrases. Incidentally that point 3, "misrouting", comes from a response to a post of yours!
- It's clear what I should have done is to enclose "USS" in quotation marks. It has recently been pointed out to me indirectly - and, as far as I can see, mistakenly - that one can distinguish between "use" and "mention" for a word by using quotation marks in the latter case.[1] You have taken the "use" sense. IBMTEST puts me in mind of the first project I performed as, supposedly[2], a networking specialist - back around December 1969-January 1970.[3][4] The project was to create a tool for Customer Engineers (CEs), known in other parts of the world as Field Engineers (FEs). The tool relied on an anticipated structure for BTAM-based applications. It was expected that each typically "start-stop" line was driven from an event detected in a "multiple- wait" list. The tool had a component in the supervisor which "redirected" an interrupt away from normal processing into the hands of the tool program, so- called "On-Line Diagnostics" (OLD). The only diagnostic routine I recall that the CE could cause to happen on the line was to write characters to the printer component, typically the old Selectric, "golf ball", mechanism. I have always regarded the USS IBMTEST function as some residual echo of the OLD project. In other words, if you ever need to explain for what reason it's there, you can say it's to make sure the "golf ball" printer mechanism works properly. It shames me to have to say I can't actually recall whether the early SNA devices, the 3767 and 3770 series for example, actually had "golf ball" printers. Chris Mason [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use-mention [2] When some colleagues on the basic networking course returned home their mail contained a card explaining that I, among others less fraudulently mentioned, was their regional networking specialist! [3] I remember working in an overcoat while pouring over listings in an as yet unheated new office building. It closed as an IBM building a couple of years ago! [4] If the term "Selsdon Man" means anything to you, read on. This will apply to UK readers only. Because this project involved working overnight, this being when the production machine was converted to a "sandpit", I was sleeping in a nearby hotel during the day. Because of the time of day I parked my car, I got the best spot alongside the doorsteps to the main door into the hotel. Because the Conservative Party event was newsworthy and, when TV journalists can't actually be in on an event they seem to think it assists their reporting if they are as near as they can be, my car figured prominently in one of the BBC news reports of the meeting. The film of that report seems to be the "stock clip" for whenever "Selsdon Man" is discussed in BBC TV programs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selsdon_Group Perhaps I should add a footnote to the Wiki article in order to explain what Harold Wilson might have had in mind when he coined the term "Selsdon man". It's suggested in the following phrase from another article[5]: "with its allusion to some kind of Palaeolithic discovery". What that phrase manages to leave out is surely something that Wilson intended to be appreciated which is that the supposed "Piltdown Man" discovery was a deliberate fake! [5] http://everything2.com/?node_id=1811867 See also http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Harold_Wilson Incidentally, working "third shift" I must have had a lot of time on my hands since I found time to enhance the OLD installation macros to include a sort of the line addresses to be intercepted. On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:03:34 -0500, Patrick O'Keefe <[email protected]> wrote: >On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:26:33 -0400, Thompson, Steve ><[email protected]> wrote: > >>... >>The picture and last laugh came from one who had been rebuffed for >>pointing out the confusion caused by using USS instead of OE or >>OMVS, or some such. >>... > >I admit I could not tell who got the last laugh and who or what >was being laughed at, but suspected I might be in the "laughed >at" catagory. I guess Chris felt that a bit more strongly than I did. >I think we were both wrong. > >And to show how deeply entrenched I am in the old (real :-) ) def >of USS, when I saw the subject I thought, Oh oh. I misused USS >once. I replaced the default IBMTEST with something that displayed >a whole buch of diagnostic stuff. > >And if nobody but Chris understands what I just said, well, that's >fine. > >Pat O'Keefe ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
