Posts by DECUS4ever

Secret weekend office bonk came within inch of killing sysadmin

Live Steam

My former boss and mentor told the story of fun in the old days.

He was a BOFH for a paper mill which, if you’ve never been in one, involves very large machines, toxic chemicals and energy in the form of steam. He was in charge of the computer systems and had a computer room in the middle of the mill.

During a construction project, they decided the best place to run a high pressure steam line was directly through the computer room. There was no need for that extra five feet of pipe to go around the room, “we can save money by going right through.” So they did.

Everything was fine until one evening when the steam yearned to be free and the pipe burst INSIDE the computer room. Since it was evening and everyone had gone home for the day, no one noticed. That was until the computers went down. The pager went off at 2:00am and after a quick trip to the mill, he walked up to the computer room where the computers were on display. The window was opaque and white. Hot and white. Hot, white and there was a screaming sound coming from inside the computer room.

He was smart enough to NOT open the door but called the plant maintenance team who reluctantly turned off the steam line. After everything cooled down and they could enter the computer room, it was obviously a total loss. They scrambled to replace all the kit while the plant maintenance guys spent a larger chunk of money for enough pipe to route around the room.

PC rebooted every time user flushed the toilet

How not to carry a CRT

The IT guy in an aluminum mill gets a call late one night. The large, high-resolution color CRT on the system monitoring the hot roll line had failed. The on-site maintenance tech had swapped out every other CRT he could get to with the one on the hot roll line but none of them would work. He was calling the IT guy because the last CRT in the plant was locked in his office.

So at 3am, he wonders into the plant and goes into his office to unhook his CRT. The two of them move the CRT out of his office to the line and proceed to drag it the ½ mile down to the control room. The maintenance guy says, “Wait a minute, I found an easy way to move the CRTs.” He walks over to the 25 ton crane with the magnetic coupler on it and before the IT guy can stop him, he swings the magnet over to the CRT and locks on. Up goes the CRT hanging by the 25 ton magnet and off he goes with it.

There was absolutely no way to ever degauss that monitor.

Super-cool sysadmin fixes PCs with gravity, or his fists

Exorcise those PC demons

Back in the day, PC monitors were made with a giant glass tube under vacuum. We had a number of these. Our secretaries had color versions which was a big deal at the time. We noticed the color wasn't uniform across the screen as happens with CRTs. Having been around TVs for years, I knew that there's a hand-held degaussing coil you use to remove the magnetic field from the CRT mask (go look it up) and it clears up the discoloration.

You take the degaussing coil, plug it in and basically wave it around the screen to remove the magnetic field. During a slow time, we sent one of the PC techs out on the task to degauss the secretaries PCs. A younger secretary watched intently as he waved the coil around the monitor. By the end of this, he had her convinced that he was exorcising the PC demons from the PC so she would have any problems.

Of course I got a call from our boss to explain what was going on. I had to convince the CFO that we hadn't been invaded by Satan and that it was a joke. The whole concept of how a CRT worked was totally lost on him. We toned down the joking for a while but she never looked at us the same again.

Shuttle Endeavour buzzes the Golden Gate Bridge

I have been privileged in my lifetime to see the true greatness of man's endeavors into space. From my early days watching a black and white TV picture beamed from thousands of miles away. A promise by a great man fulfilled with one small step and one giant leap. To the family vacation to see Apollo 15 launch. We watched it defy gravity while sitting on a boat in the Banana River off Cape Canaveral. The sheer power of the Atlas V creating a visible wave across the water from over 10 miles away.

To cry with a nation at the loss of 7 souls aboard the Challenger, a tragedy which brought a nation to its knees. I left work that day to be home with my wife and newborn son. We sat watching the news reports as they came in wondering if our children would know the experience of the human triumph over adversity knowing there is sometimes a great cost.

I cheered the resumption of the shuttle program 3 years later with the launch of the Atlantis. With all of its faults, the shuttle program produced a list of successful missions which lulled everyone into complacency until the fateful day in 2003 when we were reminded again of the risks by the Columbia disaster which took the lives of another crew. Not daunted by the events, the shuttle missions started within a year and continued until July 2011 when Atlantis flew for its last time as mission STS-135.

Over the years the space program generated a wealth of technology. Much of the technology we take for granted (integrated circuits, Kevlar, satellites and freeze dried food to name a few) as part of our daily life. Our children have long forgotten (or never were taught) how many smart men and women came together to solve problems of space exploration, not for personal gain but for the pride in what they did.

Now I watch as the space program has decayed under layers of bureaucracy, as most government organizations do, until it is a shadow of its former self. Now, NASA is told “to find a way to reach out to [the] Muslim world … to help them feel good about their historic contribution” and to promote questionable theories on climate “science”. Pulled in different directions, the program has lost its way. People call for “privatization” not remembering that in the history of manned flight, the vehicles and technology were built by the lowest bidder. The Lockeeds, Martin Mariettas and Boeings plus thousands of others competed to build the lowest cost components and operate the programs efficiently as possible.

Only time will tell if this is only a pause while we re-group or if it is truly the end of one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind. My hope is on the former.

DEC: The best of systems, the worst of systems

A contributing factor to DEC's demise

A big selling point and what put the PDP on the map was the open architecture. Anyone could (and did) build cards to go on the UNIBUS that did all kinds of things. DEC would even ship a print set with the system. When DEC's prices for peripheral hardware were twice (or more) of the going rate in the industry, someone would come along and develop a solution that would beat the DEC price. Remember the RM02 and RM03? It was a CDC 976x drive. 3rd parties designed and built a controller for the standard drive and sold them for a significant discount over the standard DEC hardware. This continued on with the advent of the Q-Bus in both the PDP and VAX. I build many a MicroVAX with 3rd party drives and memory. When DEC balked at supporting the hardware, up popped companies to provide support.

Then came the BI Bus. Its closed architecture required you buy an expensive "license" to design and build a card for the BI bus. Designing a board was complex and expensive. Guess what. No devices that competed with a DEC product were granted a license. The cost a DEC system went up and people began to look to other solutions.

This has played out over and over in the industry. Fruit computing vs. the IBM PC is yet another example. Closed architecture never leads to the growth that open architecture will in the long term.

Nova vs. PDP

I had the opportunity to work with both systems at the same time. The differences in architecture really came out when there was a hardware problem. With the Nova, the Data General tech would show up with a 14" x 14" board extender, coat hanger (no kidding), chip clip and digital scope. Each board had more than one function on it. He would stand there with the print set, scope and probe around until he figured out which chip was bad. Then came the soldering station.

When the PDP broke, the DEC guy would drop the diagnostics pack in the machine, run it, figure out what was wrong and replace the card. Each UNIBUS card did one thing. Serial Mux, memory, card reader interface, etc.

Maintenance was quick and efficient for the PDP. The Nova was an interesting exercise in component level diagnostics and repair in the field.