Re: Back in the day
"6 feet of wire later, realized that this was a very effective delay line !"
The engineers developing our System 4/70 mainframe prototype in 1967 used a loop of several feet of twisted pair wires when a problem indicated a delay was needed.
That particular prototype used a new range of fans - several of which were blowing upwards through the roof of each of the many high cabinets. They burned out so often that we ended up putting a strip of papertape over each one, with one end weighed down by a large nut. The top of each cabinet then had an array of these white flickering tongues. If a fan failed it was quickly noticed and replaced.
The normal engineering component fault paperwork used to have the dates of fitting and failure - it had to be extended to date, hour, and minute.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
