Great story! Just curious: when you say you "cannot place anything about it other than this part", do you mean "cannot" as in "for the life of me, I can't remember"? Or "cannot" as in, "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you" (or just "it would be wrong")?
On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 8:49 PM, Charles Mills <[email protected]> wrote: > I am not a huge fan of these nostalgia thread drifts but here's my > contribution. > > Somewhere in the early 1970's I did a lot of software development on rented > time. One place I rented time from -- cannot place anything about it other > than this part -- they had two machines and as I recall four banks of eight > 2401's each. Two of the banks were switchable to either machine. I bought > time third shift (because it was cheaper). When I got there they would be > running these HUGE tape sorts. Tape sorts are a real thing of beauty, with > half of the tape drives running backwards at any given time. > > The third shift operators -- and anyone who has known third shift operators > will understand this story -- would go out on the fire escape and light up > a > little illegal substance and then come back and turn off all the machine > room lights* and then sit there and groove on all the blinking lights of 24 > tape drives running a tape sort. > > I didn't participate in the illegal substances -- I did partake in those > days but can't work in that state -- but the 2401's in the darkened machine > room WERE amazing. > > Charles > > *An early example of lights-out operations. > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) > Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 3:18 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: 'Hacking The Mainframe': What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Its > Favorite Tech > > In <[email protected]>, on 04/12/2013 > at 11:41 PM, Dale Miller <[email protected]> said: > > >It wasn't always blinking lights that the public and Hollywood equated > >to computers. I think that of the movies I have seen, most of them > >focused (pun not intended) on spinning reel-to-reel tape drives. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
