Yes Virginia there were "cowboy sysprogs". Middle 70's, large financial institution in large city, twin 370/155's running MVT.
1) "Two channel switches" had just been added to the disk controllers (dual pathing). Management met with technical in a meeting questioning whether the things were worth the expense. Bottom line was "Are they working?" Environment was one where there were at least two of every piece of major hardware. A senior sysprog stormed out of meeting followed by some of other particpants. He went into the machine room, went to a disk controller used by files that supported TSO, an audio response system, and the other online system. He turned off one of the paths and said, "See nothing crashed." 2) Late in the day I was called into the ops managers office. All ops/tech managers were there. On the speaker phone was the chairman of the board. It seems there was a regulatory problem. They needed a report overnight. There were no 4th GL languages. Could I do it? Yes I said. I went to work. An hour or so later my TSO session was cancelled. The same senior sysprog mentioned in 1) felt I was getting too much priority and was not doing "authorized things." His boss (also my boss) had to be called to get him away from me. I finished before dawn. 3) Before there was control on updates, we got a mandate to control them. All we had was password protection and the ops knew the passwords. The people doing the controlled updates were not allowed at the console. A tech not yet a sysprog designed a method to front end utilities with a program that would read passwords & dsn from cards and load to a table hung off TCB. Then a patch for CSECT PASSWORD (either in nucleus or resident in memory) was made to look in table before issuing WTOR. To test the zap, the module on disk was not zapped to allow re-IPL. Memory on the TSO/online machine was zapped during "prime time". Test run. All was well. No one except tech and his boss knew what happened and the boss was not present for the event. 4) I'll quit boring you but there were cowboys. And you couldn't tell them from their hats or clothes. Just the cloud of dust and a heighty Hi ho Silver. IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> wrote on 01/26/2006 07:00:00 PM: > >>Gone are the days of cowboy sysprogs. > Did they ever exist? I certainly never changed things without understanding the ramifications > I remember when OCO first came out, and I was working for the Ontario Ministry of Government Services. > We had an 'old-style' curmudgeon of a SYSPROG who lived and breathed > HEX. He could peak at core and interpret the assembler instrtuctions on the fly. > We had a ZAP that he had to re-apply at every upgrade. > When we were OCO (under XA), they changed an off-set. > He went reading the memory dumps and found (so he thought) the new location. > He applied it (blind in my mind), three times -- three IPL's during prime-time. > And, he finally got it right. > He kept his job (that time), because nobody could hold a candle to him. > (Un)fortunately, his arrogance (I'm a SYSPROG, and I know everything) caught him a few years later. > But, he was definitely a cowboy (boy howdy). > -teD ----------------------------------------- The information contained in this communication (including any attachments hereto) is confidential and is intended solely for the personal and confidential use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. The information may also constitute a legally privileged confidential communication. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this communication in error and that any review, dissemination, copying, or unauthorized use of this information, or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail, and delete the original message. Thank you ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
