Big red buttons and very bad language: A primer for life in the IT world
- Reference: 1621841405
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/05/24/who_me/
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"Mike" is the teller of today's tale, which is set 30 years ago at the site of a major UK aerospace manufacturer. He was one of three engineers tasked with maintaining the banks of elderly (even back then) hardware used by the company.
The customer simulation department (think hydraulic-powered flight simulator platforms) presented a particular challenge. "They had a large volume of PDPs and RM03 and RM05 disk drives as well as TU77 tape drives and other assorted equipment such as the Evans and Sutherland Minicomputer," Mike explained.
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Those drives were hulking great beasts, with a capacity that looks rather weedy by today's standards. Mike recalled "a mighty 67MB of storage per disk pack" for some, but the real challenge was maintaining the things. "The RM drives would often lose calibration," he said, "especially if there had been a lot of pack changes or after a power 'glitch' which this site suffered from especially after a thunderstorm."
With repair visits being pretty much a daily occurrence, Mike and his colleague Stephen were unsurprised to get a call to visit the data centre and attend to a RM05 drive.
The data centre was normally deserted, save for the ancient PDPs (replete with flashing LEDs), the humming drives, and the whir of the TU77 and TE16 tape drives that seemed impossibly futuristic in the 1960s and 1970s but were somewhat less so by the 1990s.
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This time, however, there was tour under way of wide-eyed poppets from the local school as part of an industry education initiative. Ignoring the kids being guided around the ancient kit, our dynamic duo got to work on the stricken RM05. "For once not an issue with head mis-alignment, something a little more complicated." It took about 10 minutes to track down what the two thought was the offending component and another five to grab the spare.
[6]The future is now, old man: Let the young guns show how to properly cock things up
[7]Accidentally wiped an app's directory? Hey, just play the 'unscheduled maintenance' card. Now you're a hero
[8]Terminal trickery, or how to improve a novel immeasurably
[9]Don't cross the team tasked with policing the surfing habits of California's teens
[10]You want a reboot? I'll give you a reboot! Happy now?
"We could hear the tour going on," remembered Mike, "but no one was in our part of the DC, so replacement part installed, checks made, power on and… nothing!"
Odd. RM05 units use plenty of power so Mike expected to see at least signs of life. But it remained as dead as [11]DEC is nowadays. "It is at this stage I notice the motor (that spins the disk pack) has a red button popped out," said Mike. "Not seen that before but obviously this was caused by the earlier power issue, I just need to push it back in..."
At this point Mike confessed that while there might have been comprehensive documentation for the RM05, and perhaps he should have consulted them, they were held on micro-fiche and, unsurprisingly, he and Stephen were less than keen to lug a portable micro-fiche reader around with them. "You can safely assume," he said of the documentation, "these were not referenced."
Mike recalled Stephen saying something along the lines of "I wouldn't do that" as his hand reached for the red button, but it was too late.
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"There was an impressive blue spark, very loud bang, some acrid smoke and two engineers diving to the ground using an impressive selection of profanity."
He opened his eyes to find a crowd of shocked schoolchildren and the tour guide staring at him in disbelief through the smoke. He could hear Stephen saying something like: "Good job we stopped the drive spinning out of control!"
"I like to think we made a memorable impression on impressionable minds and some of those children are now seasoned IT professionals who have seen what havoc can be achieved with computer hardware."
It took another day to fix the RM05, and Mike learned an important lesson about pushing big red reset buttons without first knowing what had made them pop out. He also learned "that when required I can move pretty quickly whilst also providing a running profanity-loaded commentary."
And as for the RM05s themselves? They were eventually retired in favour of something smaller, cheaper and likely less bang-prone. Mike and Stephen had their revenge on the devices by wheeling them to their new home "over the roughest concrete path we could find." RIP RM05.
Were you one of those schoolchildren in the data centre, or have you failed to RTFM and made things so much worse? Let us know with an email to [13]Who, Me? ®
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Re: Microfiche
was it red and the microfiches on a disc and obtained from popular tourist attractions throughout europe?
I had a fair few of those.
RM05s
a mighty 67MB of storage
RM05s were 256MB formatted, in a washing-mchine sized cabinet. I remember, because I had to back one up every Monday morning. Direct disk-to-disk using two drives, and careful checking that you'd pushed the write-protect on the source before launching the copy...
They were also somewhat temperature sensitive, and sometimes after a cold weekend they would fail their self-tests until they warmed up.
Re: RM05s
The RM03s, also mentioned in the same paragraph, were 67MB. I guess it was those he was thinking of.
Re: RM05s
At least it wasn't a RP04 which was a Sperry & DEC designed and manufactured beast, from memory it was about a size of a classic mini and had a capacity of 88MB's and you could feel the vibrations on the floor when it was working at full pelt.
Replacement hardware?
I would think, if those RM03s and RM05s were getting all that finicky, that they'd be phased out for newer equivalents. I can't find the info now, but I'm fairly sure by then vendors sold equipment for PDPs and the like that let them replace these drives with regular SCSI hard disks (possibly even IDE, although I rather doubt it.) Although I've certainly seen shops like that, if it works don't touch a thing other than the required upkeep.
Re: Replacement hardware?
My personal experience was that aerospace companies tended to keep what they had running for as long as possible because their product developments times were so long, they liked to have the same IT equipment throughout the development term (At least in the 70's, 80's and 90's). I recall PDP-84 having SCSI disks so this was definitely an option, but it would probably be like VAX's replacing RA82, RA90's with SCSI/DSSI disks it was definitely an option but if you had spent a small fortune on RA90's for instance people tended to want to get their money worth not to mention that the computer company would want to keep the nice high margin maintenance contract going
"Mike learned an important lesson..."
...about pushing big red reset buttons without first knowing what had made them pop out. So don't leave us in suspense, what did the big red button do ?
Re: "Mike learned an important lesson..."
I'm guessing it was some variety of circuit breaker or other protection, and when he pushed it in and held it for a moment (before panic ensued), it completed the circuit again, providing power to whatever failed component had tripped it in the first place, which component then provided the obligatory light-and-noise show.
Either that, or it was the magic smoke release button.
Re: "Mike learned an important lesson..."
Either that, or it was the magic smoke release button.
I'd say the latter is the more concise shorthand name for the former...
Today's misreading
The customer simulation department (think hydraulic-powered flight simulator platforms) presented a particular challenge. For a fleeting moment as I was reading that, I was imagining the simulation being run on one of those hydraulic computers you see as demos of the principle, usually. What a shame, especially since I used to work on aircraft hydraulics; would've been a nice cross-over.
Re: Today's misreading
My first read was that it was the customer that was being simulated!!!!
I figured they must be using fuzzy logic to the handle the dithering and constant changes to requirements. But then realised that a couple of PDPs would be capable of simulating the perceived IQ of the average customer quite comfortably.
Re: Today's misreading
On second reading I thought it would have been more fun as the customer stimulation department!
This department would dispense hookers, coke and booze right up to the moment the customer has signed the (binding) contract.
And of course the C-suite inmates would ensure that they were the ones to do the performance reviews for this department!
------------> HC&B? Who else!
Re: hydraulic computers
One of the most impressionable moments I had when going through the Careers Advice system in my last year of school was visiting a Marine Research Lab in Hayes. I found this one of the most boring boring boring visits I went on... until our guide picked up a lump of transparent plastic with various holes wending their way through it. "This is a Fluidic switch" he announced. It was demonstrated by showing air being pumped through a similar device in a rig that had a fork in its path. Air consistently flowed from the source to one of the outlets. A puff of air was applied to a junction just prior to the fork, and flow passed to the other leg of the fork. A puff of air at an opposite junction flipped flow to the other fork. I was familiar with flip-flops but doing this using air, wow. (Yes, everyone at school thought I was a nerd).
The other memorable moment from these visits was being shown round the Hoover factory in Perivale, when it was the Hoover factory (lovely architecture, now Tesco), with a view to embarking on a career as a toolmaker. The guy that showed us around called everyone Fred, regardless of man, woman, ethnicity... Fast forward a few years to when I was doing my ONC: there was this bloke on the course who called everyone Fred: the African's, the Indian's, etc. I asked him "You don't work for Hoover do you?" "WTF How'd you know that?" was his reply IIRC. His name was John fwiw.
Re: hydraulic computers
The old Hoover building is a fabulous piece of art deco extravagance.
Re: a fabulous piece of art deco extravagance.
As a place of manufacture for vacuum cleaners. Yes.
Re: Today's misreading
I actually worked for a year (placement year for my degree) at one of the major flight simulator manufacturers (Link-Miles). I do remember a couple of significant incidents that happened when I was there. The first one involved the catastrophic failure of a hydraulic jack when it was being tested that resulted in a 10 ton (!!!) slab of metal being thrown through an adjacent wall, fortunately with no injuries to anyone. Did I mention that the "adjacent" wall was over 40 yards away!
The second incident related to the company's IBM 360 mainframe used to support all of the design work as well as handle project management data. The operator normally ran a routine backup every morning. One morning, having gone into the next door tape store to pull out the set of tapes that would be used for this morning's backup, he heard a sudden BANG followed my a lot of tinkling sounds. When he went back into the mainframe room he discovered one of the disk pack cabinets had a hole in its side with the steel bent outwards, and the mainframe was busy falling over. It turned out that the bearings supporting the disk pack's spindle had failed, and the spindle had promptly torn loose and headed out the side of the cabinet, at which point the disk pack turned itself into some very high-speed shrapnel. Took them a couple of days to wheel in a new disk unit and restore the system.
Re: one of the major flight simulator manufacturers (Link-Miles)
Rediffusion, back in the day: with the emphasis on the "fusion" after reading your anecdote.
Red Button
What I noticed in this photograph was the big red button on the panel... and the proximity that Mr Bean was to it
[1]https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/2CBA/production/_118605411_hi067497401.jpg
[1] https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/2CBA/production/_118605411_hi067497401.jpg
Re: Red Button
What I noticed in this photograph was the big red button on the panel... and the proximity that Mr Bean was to it
Fear not; from the photo it appears as though his hands have been tied behind his back to discourage their being placed anywhere they shouldn't be.
And I mean anywhere ...
Flashing leds on PDP-11
Were they actually leds, or were they bulbs ?
I have memories of in the 80's updating what think was a PDP11 , to use leds in a socket that fitted like a bulb.
Re: Flashing leds on PDP-11
From memory, most PDP's had ancient LEDs (Think the ones with 2 prongs) but depending on the model, some (Certainly the older models) PDP's had an impressive array of traditional small bulbs and LED's which failed on a regular basis.
Red Buttons, children
I saw a whole different story unfolding... Little Jimmy saying what's this red one do? Little Johnny not to be left out, says watch this! And proceeds to push one of the red ones with smug confidence. The button depresses and pops to the out position and silence in that area. All that can be heard is the pitter patter of little feet scramming into the distance!
Re: Red Buttons, children
"Guess what I learned at school today, Mummy!"
I.T. is a lot more fun than I thought!
I got to press the button...
I was a little kid barely knee high to a grasshopper & was part of a tour of a computer lab. The Big Scary Man in the puffy trousers (what the grey bearded old goat looked like to me) asked me if I wanted to learn to type my name on the keyboard. I said yes, stepped up, & carefully typed in "m y n a m e". He laughed, told me I was a fun kid, & told me to hit the enter key. So I pressed enter.
At which point the PSU caught fire & shot flames out the back like a flamethrower.
Best. Tour. Ever.
We were ushered out as quickly as possible while TBSM ran for a fire extinguisher. I've been in love with computers ever since. =-D
First company I worked for
Had a dec vax 8600 with Xerox and apple fax modems wired up to it.
Also had PDP 11/34 and a PDP 11/84 with I think TU10 tape drives with custom software and boot loaders on tape (not using the RSX installed on the disk packs), those had custom hardware with fibreoptics to draw graphs onto roll fed Kodak film (had a dark room as well to process the film).
On a microvax, they had an Ibis disk drive which had 4 sets of read/write heads, the thing used to rock back and forth when in use. if the lid was up for maintenace, it had something like a 6 inch wide band connecting the motor to the fixed disk - not something you'd want to get a tie caught in when it was running unless you were into instant beheading.
On and off for years, been trying to find a picture of the Ibis without luck.
RM-05s
We used them for backups of our two vaxen in my first job. The problem came when someone was demanding a restore of a particular file urgently and there were several disk packs to search through. We hit the problem of the drive not liking multiple disk changes and it popped the red button referred to in the story.
We let a DEC engineer pop it back in!
Re: RM-05s
I recall the service guide advising that the magnets used in the device (Motor) were so strong they would effectively destroy any wrist watch they came into contact with them !
SMD 80 meg
Anyone else get pulled aside carrying an SMD cartridge in an airport in those day. Nice big writing on the 80 meg ones 80MB
Microfiche
I still have my portable microfiche reader. You just peer through a lens and hold it up to the light.