LOL. Thanks. No, I really can't remember. Maybe too many illegal substances in the 1970's.
I remember some of the places I bought time: Bayer in Emeryville, Central Bank Computer Bureau in Oakland, ..., but it was neither of those. (Man, those were different times! Can you imagine a drug company or a bank turning over their entire mainframe hands-on to some kid with long hair, with no one supervising what he did?) No harm in identifying the participants: they've probably all been promoted to management by now. (Someone wrote me off-line and asked if I meant "lights-out operations" or "lit-up operations.") Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of zMan Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 7:45 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: 'Hacking The Mainframe': What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Its Favorite Tech 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
