back to article You break it, you ... run away and hope somebody else fixes it

Well hello again, dear reader, and welcome once more to Who, Me? – in which Register readers unburden themselves with confessions of tech mistakes long past. It's very cathartic, you know. Joining us for this week's catharting is a reader we'll Regomize as "Dave," who recounted a tale dating back to the late 1960s when he was …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    The mainframe stopped

    Back in those days, you didn't just restart and forget. In those days, there would have been a forensic investigation as to why and, given that it was a mainframe and not a sloppy Windows server, they would have found something.

    I wonder what conclusion they came to.

    1. JoeCool Silver badge

      Re: The mainframe stopped

      There would have been forensic data, yes, but an investigation ? The keys in the story are University and Student Lab.

    2. aerogems Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: The mainframe stopped

      You can have a "sloppy" anything. A grizzled veteran Windows admin will likely do a better job than some newly graduated IT bod trying to set up a Linux box for the first time. There's nothing inherent about any particular system over another that means you'll always have a better outcome regardless of the skill of the person(s) adminning the system.

      1. ldo Silver badge

        Re: grizzled veteran Windows admin

        What would any Linux user know about Registry edits? Now there’s a real computer system, sonny-boy!

        1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: grizzled veteran Windows admin

          you forgot your militant penguin fanatic icon

        2. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: grizzled veteran Windows admin

          You mean like five bazillion config files spread around /etc and, if you are lucky, nowhere else?

          1. ldo Silver badge

            Re: config files spread around /etc

            All nicely grouped by subsystem. And all in text format.

            1. aerogems Silver badge
              Coffee/keyboard

              Re: config files spread around /etc

              Bwahahahahahahahaha! I'll have my people send your people a bill for the new keyboard you owe me after that.

            2. Zarno
              Joke

              Re: config files spread around /etc

              Nowadays, grouped by subsystemd....

        3. aerogems Silver badge

          Re: grizzled veteran Windows admin

          The idea of the Windows Registry isn't a bad one, in a lot of ways it's better than having a bunch of ~/.* and /etc/* files for each app, but the way MS went about implementing it is a whole other story. Even back in the Windows 3.x days (maybe earlier) when the Registry first appeared, it's not like SQL didn't exist, or that MS couldn't have created something like SQLite for the purpose. Though it was probably one of those "temporary" solutions that then became anything but, and of course hindsight is always 20/20.

        4. JParker

          Re: grizzled veteran Windows admin

          The "Registry" is just Microsoft's implementation of LDAP. Linux admins understand LDAP.

          1. aerogems Silver badge

            Re: grizzled veteran Windows admin

            The number who now? I think you're confusing it with Active Directory. The Registry is a flat file database that holds a lot of configuration settings for the OS and other apps.

          2. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

            Re: grizzled veteran Windows admin

            > The "Registry" is just Microsoft's implementation of LDAP. Linux admins understand LDAP.

            This is insanely uneducated. But I respect that you did not post as AC.

            LDAP is Active Directory. Since Server 2003 R2 even compliant to official LDAP standards in a lot of details, so you can authenticate with nearly any LDAP client. Including Linux.

            Registry is local configuration storage. Separate config for System and User. And named "hive", "cell" and so on 'cause a coworker of the one who implemented it hated bees (Source: Raymond Chen himself).

            1. ldo Silver badge

              Re: LDAP is Active Directory

              More correct to say Active Directory is based on LDAP. And on Kerberos—both of which predated Active Directory.

        5. phuzz Silver badge

          Re: grizzled veteran Windows admin

          Have you ever had to use dconf? It's like the Windows Registry, but less well thought out and even more of a pita.

          1. aerogems Silver badge
            WTF?

            Re: grizzled veteran Windows admin

            There's something worse? Is it one of de Icaza's projects or something?

          2. ldo Silver badge

            Re: Have you ever had to use dconf?

            That’s a GNOME thing, isn’t it?

            You see, Linux never embraced the 1990s fad of inextricably tying the GUI into the OS kernel. On Linux, you have a choice of GUIs, or even no GUI at all.

            1. phuzz Silver badge

              Re: Have you ever had to use dconf?

              A better way to phrase it would be that 'programs have a choice of GUI', so you inevitably end up with bits of Gnome and KDE, and whatever else on a machine, because the authors of different bits of software picked whichever GUI framework they felt like. Anyway, dconf is used by both Mate and Cinnamon, but I don't keep track of what they're based on underneath, providing things work.

  2. Roopee Silver badge
    Terminator

    The story shows how dangerous (and necessary) it is to challenge vested interests - in this case IBM.

    Btw, nice nod to religion there at the end...

    Icon: AI

  3. b0llchit Silver badge
    Joke

    If you break it, you bought ityou run.

    Seems fair.

  4. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
    Coat

    why didn't he notice...

    ... the messages on the other computer stating "I am sorry Dave, i can't do that" ???

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: why didn't he notice...

      more like

      +++out of cheese error. redo from start+++

    2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: why didn't he notice...

      "Dave's not here, man."

  5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    If the line printer was only buzzing there must have been something wrong.

    1. stungebag

      True. Line printers neither buzzed nor made any sort of noise that could ever be described as comforting.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Ah yes. I remember line printers. I was working in the test dept of a company making line printers, card punch machines, tape punches etc. We had a whinge from Carpet City - the offices "upstairs" - about too much noise.

        Noise? we figured. Noise?

        We decided to legitimately have "several" machines (read: everything that wasn't broken), running a test mode. Tape punches and card punches are noisy enough but have you any idea just how noisy a dozen line printers are when churning out page after page of 132 columns of underscore characters?

        We didn't get any more complaints.

        1. Sparkus

          Noise? You Want Noise?

          How about running alternate column/cascading row test patterns on a 300 card per minute card punch........

          1. trindflo Silver badge

            Noise?

            I don't recall anything ever being close to a 6250 tape drive that wasn't properly sealed (half-assed put together because it was being used for test). The air whistling past made a very loud, very high frequency shriek and I was apparently the only person in the building young enough to hear it. I wondered if it was affecting anyone else even though they couldn't hear it because I wasn't too far from running mindlessly out of the building it was that painful. It seemed like they tested me a couple of times to verify I wasn't faking it then checked me out some hearing protection.

      2. VicMortimer Silver badge

        The only one I was ever around wasn't all that loud. I mean, I suppose it was loud, but I was much more tolerant of noisy computing equipment back then, and it was near the end for line printers, so the sound enclosure was quite good. I suppose it could be described as a buzzing sound, particularly if you were in the next room. I don't remember exactly what it was, I do remember it was the band type. Its job was to print bank statements for a small bank.

      3. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

        Line printers were noisy, but still not as noisy as daisy-wheel printers, as I recall. We had one Diablo printer (El Diablo to friends) which sounded like a machine gun going off. It was quite temperamental too.

        1. F. Frederick Skitty Silver badge

          Try a barrel printer - the chain printer's even louder brother. We had one at my first employer, and it was still used for monthly invoices despite being officially obsolete. It haf a room to itself and a massive acoustic hood, but could still be heard from roughly fifty metres and numerous partition walls away.

        2. Charlie van Becelaere

          Those Diablos

          could be fitted as Braille printers as well - special platen and paper and an awful lot of noise!

      4. rcxb Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        I'll just leave this here:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8I6qt_Z0Cg

    2. Sam not the Viking Silver badge

      Buzzfeed

      I may be the only person this has happened to, well it didn't happen to me, it was a friend. Well, this person had bought a new personal printer, ahead of the game.... a dot-matrix printer. After fixing the cable problem (the multi-coloured flat-ribbon had been poorly crimped so my friend told me) he was all set to print a document with all the special codes that were required to get the correct presentation etc.

      Going on from one letter per page to one word per page was a great step and I don't think I have ever seen so much fan-fold paper wasted. (Lamentably, this is untrue!)

      But when working properly it buzzed away with what was music to my/his ears.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Buzzfeed

        You can have too much buzzing, though.

        In those days I was experimenting with barcodes and, very proud that the code I had written actually worked, I decided to scale up a barcode so it would fill a full page.

        At some point near the end of that page, a weird tearing noise was heard, following by the ribbon cassette jumping out of the printer.

        Given that a dot matrix is made for characters, it turned out the cooling fins around the head are not really up to handling a full page of mostly black.

        On examination, it turned out that the head had overheated and so a pin had jammed and remained stuck out of the head while it tried to move the head along - the first tearing sound was it eating into the rubber of the roll. The ribbon slowly moved with the head, so at first that only got a little rip, but a carriage return meant the head changed direction opposite to how the ribbon was moving so the cassette got ripped from its moorings.

        After that, switching to the amusingly named Canon Bubblejet (BJ 130 - honestly, which marketeer got away with that) was a good idea, and also a LOT quieter :).

        1. Manolo
          Trollface

          Re: BJ130

          In our computer lab in uni we had printers that would name their print job. So if you would print from WordPerfect, on the tiny screen of the printer it would say "HP job".

          You can probably see where this is going, but I was never able to change the name of the WordPerfect executable or create a program with a suitable name.

      2. anothercynic Silver badge

        Re: Buzzfeed

        The Epson LX-400 dot matrix printer in Windows TTF mode was a LOUD mother trucker. It used to get me in trouble with the other people on my floor in my uni res... Until I pointed out that if they didn't like it, they could always not come to me with requests to print their fancy assignments... :-)

        To be fair though - It *was* noisy, even with a pillow over the printer head enclosure.

        1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

          Re: Buzzfeed

          Ask them to donate a laser printer, if they want a less noisy version of their printout.

  6. that one in the corner Silver badge

    The line printer stopped both its buzzing and its merriment.

    An untestable hypothesis:

    As it had just come to the end of its run, not-so coincidentally with one of the many, many test runs being attempted that evening.

    > He tried everything he could think of to get the computer to resume whatever task it had been doing, but nothing worked.

    Because it had finished!

    A student's natural paranioa kicks in, leading to a lifetime of looking over his shoulder for his old tutor, before caving in and confessing to El Reg in the hopes of stopping the dreams of Sysop Past, draped in fanfold.

    Moral: always print a big "DONE" at the end of the run.

    Immoral: don't print even a tiny "end" because one day you'll read a story like this and cackle over the anguish you've caused one of those annoying students, cluttering up your beautiful lab.

    1. Zippy´s Sausage Factory

      Re: The line printer stopped both its buzzing and its merriment.

      Untestable, yes.

      What actually happened? Probably.

  7. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

    That headline

    is what "take responsibility" means. We are taught that in politics all the time!

    1. DJV Silver badge

      Re: "take responsibility" We are taught that in politics all the time

      Pity no one ever teaches the "grab the money and run" politicians that!

    2. Bebu
      Windows

      Re: That headline

      《is what "take responsibility" means. We are taught that in politics all the time!》

      Haven't noticed anyone in the the UK government "taking responsibility."

      More a case of various leaders and cabinet members fFaffing about, fFing up and sodding off but unlike young Dave never appeared to have been blighted with good intentions.

      While not having been within cooee of a IBM mainframe, I vaguely recall reading in a textbook (not that long after Dave's misadventure) that these big boys didn't do any actual I/O themselves but devolved I/O to various specialized processors (with which I assume IBM used to nickel and dime their poor customers.) So Dave's plan might not have been feasible from the outset.

    3. Vincent Ballard

      Re: That headline

      Isn't it "I take full responsibility, which is why I've fired the person who was to blame"?

  8. Scene it all

    I remember those days. If it was an IBM shop then the "small" computers would have been members of the 1400 family and all they did was handle "unit record" equipment like printers and card readers. Magnetic tape could operate much faster than those things and tape is what the "main" computer dealt with because time on *that* computer was so precious. But keep in mind that the "main" computer was only a little bit more powerful than a DEC PDP-8 and it certainly could not manage operating a line printer and card reader at the same time it was doing real work. For example, the memory cycle speed of an IBM 1401 was about 87 kHz per *character*.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And now we have desktop systems clocking 4GHz and you can't get any work done because Excel popped up an error messages somewhere behind all the other windows on your screen..

      1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

        ...and with 8 cores at 4 GHz + 16 GB RAM to be just enough to run "Teams"...

        1. Oh Matron!

          I'd argue that Teams doesn't really "Run". More like "Meander, with the odd fall into the gutter like a drunk on a friday night on Piccadilly approach"

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Or Excel decided to uninstall itself, as happened to a relative this weekend!

        1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

          Ah, someone with REAL anti-virus software.

          :)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Getting "SNAed"

    So at my uni there was a course messing about with IBM System Network Architecture. I wasn't in it, so I don't remember the actual course. My roommate was, though...

    One of the consequences of messing about was tickling SNA bugs and getting your terminal and your login session locked. You then had to go to the operator, tell her your login, and she would force-reset it.

    Well, there's another protocol called Remote Spooling Communications System (RSCS) and it was how things got printed from a remote machine, and the printers were in constant chatter.

    There was a "service machine" in VM/CMS (i.e. daemon) that ran this, logged in as "RSCSN"

    My roommate had the bright idea "wot if I tell the op I'm RSCSN and she forces it?"

    Sure enough, she did, and suddenly all the half-dozen very large printers got very quiet. Oops.

    There were beatings all around... my roommate for doing it, the operator for knowing better, and the instructor for such a misdesigned assignment.

    1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: Getting "SNAed"

      One of the consequences of messing about was tickling SNA bugs and getting your terminal and your login session locked. You then had to go to the operator, tell her your login, and she would force-reset it.

      Something along the lines of vary online <device> force because when in doubt, use the force! ISTR there was a test option as well which sometimes gave some cryptic IBM diagnostics info who's inner mysteries were only revealed to the initiated. Namely those who'd paid through the nose for those manuals. Oh, and if varying online/offline a few times didn't work, just change the device to the 3174 it was connected to and bounce that..

      Oh, those were the days! Also SNA can mostly be blamed on Ford cos they were an IBM shop and had outgrown what IBM could do with their previous architecture..

  10. Sparkus

    I have my own dead list......

    After which I can finally relax about the dawning years of my own career..........

  11. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    Reminds me of an incident in the early '80s. I was building up some code for commincating across the network with other clients. I was sat next to station 20 and testing my code trying to send things to station 20. After several minutes of failure I heard a "hey, my computer's stopped working"..... from station 32.

    In my thrown-together test code I'd just used a fast two-character hex parse for the destination station number instead of the decimal that everything used. I'd accidently killed station 0x20.... :(

    1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

      Hex vs Decimal and the Hands of the Ignorant

      One day I was working at a terminal in a room of 12~16 of them, all hooked up to our uni's TI 990 minicomputer. Next door was another terminal room with about 32 terminals in it. My friend was a non-programmer, but was using his terminal to play games, and peppering me non-stop with newbie questions. I said, "Rick, quit bugging me. If you keep it up, I'll log you off."

      He wouldn't shut up, so I did (the relevant program did not require special privileges).

      He looked at my CRT and copied the command I had used, substituting "my" terminal number for his. The terminal numbers were Dymo-labelled on to their fronts in decimal. The program required a terminal number ... in *HEX*. From the other terminal room came a shout: "Aughhh! MY WORK!!"

      Rick departed post-haste, I cleared my screen as a precaution, and I resumed my work in serenity.

  12. chivo243 Silver badge
    Windows

    I looked for help...

    Really! I did! Close to 20 years ago, the office I worked in was adjacent to the server room. I loved it! Then we were moved to another office down the corridor and around the corner. I once drew the short stick and had to clean up the server room. As I was wiping down shelves, I moved an old NT4 print server, it was just a beefed up desktop tower, just a few inches, and whirrr to nothing. It was off, and would not power back up. I checked the power cables all secure, but no life. Since our office used to be next to the server room, there was no phone in the server room. I headed down the corridor to find my manager in our new office... I stopped at the toilet, and heard my manager an another engineer rush by in the corridor chattering about the server. I checked in with the office, only to hear about the server, and returned to the scene of the incident. My manager had determined that the power supply had croaked. I always wondered, did my small movement cause it? Or was it already on it's way out and picked the moment I was there to give up the ghost?

    1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Re: I looked for help...

      You just pulled a Schödinger!

    2. Coen Dijkgraaf

      Re: I looked for help...

      Yes, it can sometimes happen that moving a computer will cause the power supply to blow.. For one company I worked for they wanted an audit of all PC's. And these in those days tended to be tower PC's under desks, and the Serial Number was at the back, so I went around multiple sites, and had to slightly move over 100 computers to read the serial number. One of them also stopped working, and it was also the power supply that had blown.

  13. Yes Me Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Why didn't he use RSCS?

    I'm amazed to read on Wikipedia that RSCS was only released to customers in 1975.

    RSCS = Remote Spooling Communications Subsystem. In others, spool input cards from or lineprinter output to a remote computer. Exactly what "Dave" needed in the late 1960s. Time machine not provided.

    1. dboyes

      Re: Why didn't he use RSCS?

      Because at that time RSCS would have required FEP hardware and probably a pair of bisync modems.

  14. JParker

    Great Developers Have Great Crashes

    One of the things I learned in my 30 year career is that the greater a developer is, the bigger the crashes they ultimately cause. The best developers always push the systems harder, and closer to the "bleeding edge" than others.

    1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

      Re: Great Developers Have Great Crashes

      No, not really. That's like saying great car drivers are the ones whose cars slide down embankments.

      Yes, great programmers get great performance. They do this by testing in safe environments, and being **** sure that they don't crash things with their new shinies.

  15. ian 22

    Bless me Vulture, for I have sinned.

    When I were a student, we had access to the school's CDC mainframe running the Mass Storage Operating System and the operator’s console. I confess I was tempted and succumbed to that temptation in 1970.

    On the last day to turn in our class projects (in the form of a deck of IBM punch cards), the input tray of the card reader was full and my project sat many decks from the front. Knowing I couldn’t get my program run before the deadline I allowed the devil to influence me. Having perused the operators manual, I knew I could command the operating system to search the card reader for a specific deck, identified by the JCL card supplied by my instructor. In that moment I sinned and entered that command with my deck's ID. Immediately, the reader began moving decks from the input tray to the output stackers without a pause until it reached mine, then it slowed, read and compiled my code and printed my output. Other students retrieved their unread decks with puzzled looks, while I retrieved my deck and listing with great satisfaction.

    Until now, I remembered that little escapade with great pleasure. Knowledge is power! Now, I wonder how many lives I ruined by walking over them. Power corrupts, and I confess my corruption.

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