Tripped across this, which sorta makes me sad: https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/1bsy5sf/what_is_this_machine_called_and_what_are_the/
The 3420 reminds me: back at UofW, they had a system that would create a 4-character hash (I assume) from the tape number. So when you asked for tape 1234, the operator would pull it and when they responded to the mount request, they had to enter that 4-character value. If they'd accidentally pulled 1235 instead, there would be a mismatch and it would tell them to try again. Was something like this common? This was on VM/SP, and I'm sure it wasn't standard there, as when I left and went to my first vendor I never saw it again. Seemed simple yet clever. ObAnecdote: UofW built the Math building with a "pit"--the data center--in the middle, two stories tall, with glass-walled rooms around it on the second level. One of those rooms was a public terminal room, and if working there meant that when you needed a tape, you could put in the mount request and watch the operator ignore it. Srsly: there were good operators and bad ones, and if one of the bad ones was on, you'd see him (always him, in those days!) look up, check what had made the console beep, and go back to reading. Still irritates me, 45 years later. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
