Living legends
Marielle Lilleberg Ribbing
characters that only exists on the net and are kept alive by one or
several persons. Mythic personalities that are still in use, and that
you can get in touch with. Characters like Kibo and B1ff on the Usenet.
One of the sources that I've found so far is the FAQ:s Net.legends
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/net-legends-faq/part1.html
If you know of any other source of information about this, please
contact me.
If there is interest in this group I'll summeries.
/ Marielle <ml1...@mc.hik.se>
Marielle Lilleberg Ribbing
H.W.M.
> If there is interest in this group I'll summeries.
If the snow melts the speed it does, summeries here soon.
Try "Bun Mui" in alt.usage.english it is presumed a multiple.
--
Cheers, | The conformity of purpose will be achieved |
HWM | through the mutual satisfaction of requirements.|
==> hen...@GNWmail.com & http://www.softavenue.fi/u/henry.w
bill_h
>
> I’m doing some research for a project in journalism.
okay
> Mythic personalities that are still in use, and that
> you can get in touch with. Characters like Kibo....
arghhhhh!! Kibo MYTHIC?
oh shut up. what does she know?
Kibo lives. Went bald. Changed name. But Kibo not mythic. Kibo
LEGENDARY.
well, that's journalism for ya
> If you know of any other source of information about this, please
> contact me.
> If there is interest in this group I'll summeries.
Don't journalists use spell-checkers?
Nah. More revisionism. Words. People. All the same. Revise 'em all.
Geoff Lane
Marielle Lilleberg Ribbing <ml1...@mc.hik.se> writes:
> I’m doing some research for a project in journalism. I’m searching for
> characters that only exists on the net and are kept alive by one or
> several persons. Mythic personalities that are still in use, and that
> you can get in touch with. Characters like Kibo and B1ff on the Usenet.
There are a number of well known, non-existant secret organisations on the
Internet "#$%^&*(rty
NO CARRIER
--
Geoff. Lane. Manchester Computing
Today's Excuse:
You need to upgrade your VESA local bus to a MasterCard local bus.
Joe Morris
>There are a number of well known, non-existant secret organisations on the
>Internet "#$%^&*(rty
>NO CARRIER
With just about everyone now using PPP exclusively (with a few SLIP
holdouts), how many new users get that joke?
Joe Morris
David Scheidt
: glm...@swirl.mcc.ac.uk (Geoff Lane) writes:
What does AFC care about new users?
David Schei
Circuit Closed.
Jack Peacock
>What does AFC care about new users?
>
or later?
How about someone who never used an 026/029 or an ASR 33? Someone who
can't parse the RJE acronym? Someone who never programmed in
(Algol/Cobol/PLI, pick one or more)?
Jack Peacock
RadioFlyr
(Kirk Is) wrote:
> David Scheidt (dsch...@enteract.com) wrote:
> > In alt.folklore.computers Joe Morris <jcmo...@jmorris-pc.mitre.org> wrote:
> > : glm...@swirl.mcc.ac.uk (Geoff Lane) writes:
>
> > :>There are a number of well known, non-existant secret organisations on the
> > :>Internet "#$%^&*(rty
> > :>NO CARRIER
>
> > : With just about everyone now using PPP exclusively (with a few SLIP
> > : holdouts), how many new users get that joke?
>
> > What does AFC care about new users?
>
> While I've been around long enough to get the joke (and seen the NO
> CARRIER message myself) I've always wondered if the "NO CARRIER" message
> could actually be sent to the host computer? (followed by line noise
> equalling the apropriate "close editor and post" command, of course.)
>
> Still, it's a nice gag.
This falls in with the other classic "oldtimers' joke,", the ^H^H^H gag.
Back in the old days, when we would hollow out a stump and stretch the
skin of an animal over it to pound out the ASCII in order to get on out
BBSes, mainframes, etc., it was common to see ^H everytime we hit the
backspace key. Now it is sort of an old-folks' handshake, an in-joke.
Example:
Dear Bast^H^H^H^H Sir,
Please remove the HTML from your otherwise insip^H^H^H^H^H witty and
charming post.
Sincerly,
Adol^H^H^H^H Jerry Bergen
Radio"^H count exaggerated for effect"Flyr
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Visit the "Little web server," || Also my other pages:
A Mac SE serving the web, at: || http://www.lpl.org/people/gianni
http://149.96.1.33 || http://149.96.1.135
RadioFlyr
wrote:
> David Scheidt wrote in message <7f8de3$gtp$1...@eve.enteract.com>...
> >What does AFC care about new users?
> >
> What _is_ a new user? Someone who started after micros came out, 1975
> or later?
>
> How about someone who never used an 026/029 or an ASR 33? Someone who
> can't parse the RJE acronym? Someone who never programmed in
> (Algol/Cobol/PLI, pick one or more)?
> Jack Peacock
We're all new users, everytime we come across something new, Just when I
get comfortable with my level of skill and knowledge, something new comes
down the pike to upset my Apple cart.
Radio"and it's a cart full of Macs"Flyr
Julian Thomas
>What _is_ a new user? Someone who started after micros came out, 1975 or
>later?
>How about someone who never used an 026/029 or an ASR 33? Someone who
>can't parse the RJE acronym? Someone who never programmed in
>(Algol/Cobol/PLI, pick one or more)?
Someone who never hung a 0.5" tape?
Someone who never programmed for drum latency?
Someone who never had to use an o24 to punch alpha data?
--
Julian Thomas: jt 5555 at epix dot net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove numerics for email
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
-- --
If God had inteded man to smoke, He would have set him on fire.
Kirk Is
> In alt.folklore.computers Joe Morris <jcmo...@jmorris-pc.mitre.org> wrote:
> : glm...@swirl.mcc.ac.uk (Geoff Lane) writes:
> :>There are a number of well known, non-existant secret organisations on the
> :>Internet "#$%^&*(rty
> :>NO CARRIER
> : With just about everyone now using PPP exclusively (with a few SLIP
> : holdouts), how many new users get that joke?
> What does AFC care about new users?
While I've been around long enough to get the joke (and seen the NO
CARRIER message myself) I've always wondered if the "NO CARRIER" message
could actually be sent to the host computer? (followed by line noise
equalling the apropriate "close editor and post" command, of course.)
Still, it's a nice gag.
--
Kirk Israel - kis...@cs.tufts.edu - http://www.alienbill.com
"Anything worth doing well is worth doing slowly." --Gypsy Rose Lee
Nick Spalding
> Someone who never had to use an o24 to punch alpha data?
All the 024s I ever fixed in my IBM CE days had alpha keyboards. Do
you perhaps mean the 011 which was a different kettle of fish
altogether?
--
Nick Spalding
Howard S Shubs
>Still, it's a nice gag.
Have you ever been UUUUUUUUUUUUU'd to death?
--
Howard S Shubs The Denim Adept
John Varela
I never used it, of course, but in the early 60s there was this manual machine
on top of a file cabinet near the SAGE maintenance console (which was actually
the operator's console) at Lincoln Lab Bldg F; it accepted one card at a time,
and a sliding mechanism permitted one hole at a time to be punched at any of
the punch postitions on the card. My recollection is that it was a Model 001.
Could that be?
--
John Varela
(delete . between mind and spring to e-mail me)
Julian Thomas
>> Someone who never had to use an o24 to punch alpha data?
>All the 024s I ever fixed in my IBM CE days had alpha keyboards. Do you
>perhaps mean the 011 which was a different kettle of fish
>altogether?
Well, I meant an 024 with only a numeric kbd (they did come that way) but
I've also used the 010 (I think it's about the same as the 011) for alpha
punching.
Mark of a frequent keypuncher: typing an upper case U instead of a "1".
--
Julian Thomas: jt 5555 at epix dot net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove numerics for email
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
-- --
Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Nick Spalding
> I never used it, of course, but in the early 60s there was this manual machine
> on top of a file cabinet near the SAGE maintenance console (which was actually
> the operator's console) at Lincoln Lab Bldg F; it accepted one card at a time,
> and a sliding mechanism permitted one hole at a time to be punched at any of
> the punch postitions on the card. My recollection is that it was a Model 001.
> Could that be?
You are quite right, I should have said 001. At one stage in my
career I punched hundreds of cards of Fortran on one of those.
The 011 was a full keypunch with an alpha keyboard. I have a couple
of 220v/110v 200va transformers, to adapt them to European voltage,
from those in my garage.
--
Nick Spalding
Karen J. Cravens
>> While I've been around long enough to get the joke (and seen the NO
>> CARRIER message myself) I've always wondered if the "NO CARRIER"
message
>> could actually be sent to the host computer? (followed by line noise
>> equalling the apropriate "close editor and post" command, of course.)
>>
>> Still, it's a nice gag.
Yes, it could... back in the olden days, it wasn't uncommon for BBS
programs to, when cleaning up after an abend, go ahead and save the
message-in-progress.
Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout. So sometimes you saw
NO CARRIER
RING
RING
RING
and so on. In the really early days, you could type a well-timed +++ and
have an occasional chance at throwing the host's modem into command mode.
Or, depending on how "advanced" the editor was, use its PAUSE feature to
insert the appropriate timing in there, and post one that would do that to
the modem of anyone subsequently reading the message. Whee.
Karen "my modem just had a physical ORIG/OFF/ANS switch" Cravens
Victor Eijkhout
> Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
> uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout.
^^^^^^^^
Speaking of things a newcomer would not recognise.
--
Victor Eijkhout
Lee Rudolph
What, newcomers don't even know their Spengler these days?
Lee "hail, hail, the Untergang's all here" Rudolph
Sergej Roytman
Victor Eijkhout <eijk...@nala.cs.utk.edu> wrote:
>Karen J. Cravens <silve...@phoenyx.net> writes:
>> Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
>> uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout.
> ^^^^^^^^
>Speaking of things a newcomer would not recognise.
Oh, gimme a break! _I_ recognise this, and the first computer I ever
touched was an Apple ][. Unless I deserve to qualify as ancient, I
think that there should be some other criterion for newcomerness.
--
Sergej Roytman (got friendly little abend messages from RS6Ks, and a
Big Blue Dino, even)
Karen J. Cravens
<omk8va2...@nala.cs.utk.edu>:
>Karen J. Cravens <silve...@phoenyx.net> writes:
>
>> Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
>> uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout.
> ^^^^^^^^
>Speaking of things a newcomer would not recognise.
You don't think? I still hear (and use, obviously) that one. 'Course, I work
in an IBM shop, so a lot of anachronisms live on.
Which brings up, as long as I'm crossposting to afc anyway, the
expression/command "vary," which seems to be a Blue exclusive, and which no
one, even the die-hard longtime dino herders among us, has ever heard an
etymology for. It's been annoying us lately. Anyone know?
(Email followups would be best, since that bit is offtopic for the group I
normally read/post to.)
Karen "would the last person to leave please vary off the lights" Cravens
StranglerW
>While I've been around long enough to get the joke (and seen the NO
>CARRIER message myself) I've always wondered if the "NO
>CARRIER" message could actually be sent to the host computer?
>(followed by line noise equalling the apropriate "close editor and post"
>command, of course.)
If the receiving software only paid attention to the "NO CARRIER"
coming from the modem, sure. But in most cases, the software is smart
enough to either ignore the "NO CARRIER", or at least back it up with
the Carrier Detect hardware signal.
Back in high school, when I first started BBSing and logging onto
mainframes, all the cool kids could whistle a 300 baud carrier into the
phone. Of course, this is the opposite of the "NO CARRIER" thing, in
that we could fool the host into thinking it had a connection, even
though we hadn't mashed the phone handset down into the acoustic
modem. We could also whistle into the acoustic modem, and get all
sorts of nice trash to show up on our dumb terminals.
Nothing beats the feeling of joy you get, though, when you can whistle
the right stuff into a microphone and fool your so-called computer into
thinking it's read a valid block of code off a cassette tape (and I've still
got an old Procol Harum tape with an accidentally-recorded block of
code on it in the middle of a song - "Conquistador, your sta-beeeeep-
brazaaaap-pbbbbbbt" - I think it was a Kit-2000 I was messing with).
- Dave W., who's had enough nostalgia for one night.
John Everett
>
>Someone who never hung a 0.5" tape?
Or someone who never hung a 3/4" tape? And yes, I have; on a Honeywell 200.
--
jeve...@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Things have gotten so bad I feel the need to disguise my email address.
And I don't like this explanation because I just hate long signatures.
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
Karen J. Cravens (silve...@phoenyx.net) writes:
> "Victor Eijkhout" eijk...@nala.cs.utk.edu wrote in
> <omk8va2...@nala.cs.utk.edu>:
>
> in an IBM shop, so a lot of anachronisms live on.
No, the term ("abending") fits the environment.
>
> Which brings up, as long as I'm crossposting to afc anyway, the
> expression/command "vary," which seems to be a Blue exclusive, and which no
Whilst keeping the operating system (eg. MFT or MVT) running,
this command could "vary" devices online or offline, thereby
allowing other running jobs to continue without interruption,
providing the device in question wasn't being used. If a job
was using such a device, it was abended.
Simon Slavin
"Jack Peacock" <pea...@simconv.com> wrote:
> David Scheidt wrote in message <7f8de3$gtp$1...@eve.enteract.com>...
> >What does AFC care about new users?
I'm /so/ glad someone didn't write that about AFU.
> What _is_ a new user? Someone who started after micros came out, 1975
> or later?
>
> How about someone who never used an 026/029 or an ASR 33? Someone who
> can't parse the RJE acronym? Someone who never programmed in
> (Algol/Cobol/PLI, pick one or more)?
Gentlemen, your cross-post to alt.folklore.urban obliges you to
expand the above acronyms, even though 90% of the people who used
the acronyms wouldn't recognise the expansions and 99% of the
readers of AFU don't care. Silly, isn't it.
Simon.
--
No junk email please. | What a story !
<http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk> | I can't wait to embellish it.
| -- Elaine from _Ally McBeal_
Chris Hedley
Victor Eijkhout <eijk...@nala.cs.utk.edu> writes:
> Karen J. Cravens <silve...@phoenyx.net> writes:
>
>> Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
>> uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout.
> ^^^^^^^^
> Speaking of things a newcomer would not recognise.
I used to have hourse of fun buggering about with EYEWITNESS
to find interesting things in ABEND dumps, but then some bugger
RACF'ed it.
Chris.
J. Chris Hausler
>>Someone who never hung a 0.5" tape?
>
>Or someone who never hung a 3/4" tape? And yes, I have; on a Honeywell 200.
Chris (and I still have several spools of it) Hausler
Julian Thomas
>>Or someone who never hung a 3/4" tape? And yes, I have; on a Honeywell 200.
Likewise, on H800.
>How about one inch tape, on a Bendix G-20 :-)
I'll go you 2" better - 3" tape on the Datamatic 1000.
--
Julian Thomas: jt 5555 at epix dot net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove numerics for email
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
-- --
Programming today is a race between software engineers stirring to build
bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce
bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.
Gary_...@trap.bc.sympatico.ca
On 1999-04-17 kis...@allegro.cs.tufts.edu(KirkIs) said:
>> :>There are a number of well known, non-existant secret
>>organisations on the :>Internet "#$%^&*(rty
>> :>NO CARRIER
>> : With just about everyone now using PPP exclusively (with a few
>>SLIP : holdouts), how many new users get that joke?
How about...
"NO CARRIER"
-- Really BAD News for a Naval Aviator --
Karen J. Cravens
<zFpS2.19$M22.2...@news.bctel.net>:
>How about...
>"NO CARRIER"
> -- Really BAD News for a Naval Aviator --
Ooh, then you're starting to get into tagline (sigfile) range:
Hey! Lower your landing gear!
$%^&#$ NO HARRIER
Hey! We're out of wine, women and song!
#@&($# NO MERRIER
Toto! Look out!
@#$&*( NO TERRIER
et al.
Karen "when newsgroups collide" Cravens
Deacon B.
Roytman) wrote:
>In article <omk8va2...@nala.cs.utk.edu>,
>Victor Eijkhout <eijk...@nala.cs.utk.edu> wrote:
>>Karen J. Cravens <silve...@phoenyx.net> writes:
>>> Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
>>> uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout.
^^^^^^^^
>>Speaking of things a newcomer would not recognise.
>Oh, gimme a break! _I_ recognise this, and the first computer I ever
>touched was an Apple ][. Unless I deserve to qualify as ancient, I
>think that there should be some other criterion for newcomerness.
Perhaps *you* recognize it, but if you start looking though Big Dics,
you will find that many of them don't have the slightest idea what an
abend is.
How many newcomers know that there was an Apple II. Heck, most of them
don't even know about the Apple III and Lisa.
deke
Deacon B.
slavins.at.hearsay.demon.co.uk@localhost (Simon Slavin) wrote:
>> How about someone who never used an 026/029 or an ASR 33? Someone who
>> can't parse the RJE acronym? Someone who never programmed in
>> (Algol/Cobol/PLI, pick one or more)?
>Gentlemen, your cross-post to alt.folklore.urban obliges you to
>expand the above acronyms, even though 90% of the people who used
>the acronyms wouldn't recognise the expansions and 99% of the
>readers of AFU don't care. Silly, isn't it.
Those aren't acronyms, they are model numbers. (With the exception of
RJE, and the point there was to test the knowledge of those who
posted.)
If you want to know the origination of the COBOL language name, please
expand the acronym "Simon Slavin"
deke
John Varela
> You are quite right, I should have said 001. At one stage in my
> career I punched hundreds of cards of Fortran on one of those.
Lordy! What did you do to deserve that?
I always thought the thing was just for emergency use to reproduce a folded,
spindled, or otherwise mutilated card.
Jim Stewart
Roger Blake wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Apr 1999 15:52:58 -0700, Jack Peacock <pea...@simconv.com> wrote:
> >What _is_ a new user? Someone who started after micros came out, 1975
> >or later?
>
> In the context of the Internet and Usenet, I'd say it is someone who knows no
> other way to connect to the Internet but PPP (but doesn't realize that's what
> he's using), doesn't know what a dumb terminal is or what ASCII is, may have
> heard of Unix but has no real idea of what it is or what a shell account is,
> uses colorful metaphors such as "surfing" and/or "cyber-something" in a vain
> attempt to describe something he hasn't a chance in hell of understanding,
> and someone who without "point and click" could not operate a computer in
> order to save his life. (Oh, and if he gives such matters any thought at
> all, he probably thinks that Microsoft invented multi-tasking operating
> systems.)
>
What about someone who reads Wired and relates to it. Reminds me of Mike
Cookson's definition of "Power User"... A Power User is a user whose computer
exists solely to consume electrical power, as opposed to one who actually
performs productive work.
Jim
Nick Spalding
> On Sat, 17 Apr 1999 20:43:52, spal...@iol.ie (Nick Spalding) wrote:
>
> > You are quite right, I should have said 001. At one stage in my
> > career I punched hundreds of cards of Fortran on one of those.
>
> Lordy! What did you do to deserve that?
I was running the scoring/handicapping system for the sailing club I
belong to on a government system where I was doing a contract job. I
didn't have access to a proper keypunch as all official stuff was
punched by the pool and we were in a remote office with just a courier
link. I would not be in the least surprised if those programs are
somewhere in their libraries to this day - all this took place in
1976.
After that my own office acquired a DG Nova and I ran it there for a
couple of years, after which I translated the thing to Basic on a
Commodore Pet. It now runs under VB on a PII 400Mhz machine, having
acquired a lot of bells lights and whistles along the way. The core
of the system is still pretty much the same.
--
Nick Spalding
John Meadows
Deacon B. wrote in message
........... deleted
Joe Morris
>Someone who never had to use an o24 to punch alpha data?
Naw...make that "Someone who never had to use an IBM model 001 punch."
The 001 looked something like a credit card imprinter -- and had one
button for each of the 12 rows, all mounted on a movable frame that
had to be moved to the column you wanted to punch. None of that fancy
"Press the 'minus' key to punch the 11-row" stuff...
Joe Morris
Joe Morris
>In article <3718a934$3$wg$mr2...@news.epix.net>, jt5...@epix.net says...
>>Someone who never hung a 0.5" tape?
>Or someone who never hung a 3/4" tape? And yes, I have; on a Honeywell 200.
...or someone who never heated his or her lunch by putting it on the top
of one of the racks full of vacuum tubes?
Joe Morris
Joe Morris
>ft...@engin.umich.edu (Sergej Roytman) wrote:
>>Victor Eijkhout <eijk...@nala.cs.utk.edu> wrote:
>>>Karen J. Cravens <silve...@phoenyx.net> writes:
>>>> Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
>>>> uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout.
> ^^^^^^^^
>>>Speaking of things a newcomer would not recognise.
>>Oh, gimme a break! _I_ recognise this, and the first computer I ever
>>touched was an Apple ][. Unless I deserve to qualify as ancient, I
>>think that there should be some other criterion for newcomerness.
>Perhaps *you* recognize it, but if you start looking though Big Dics,
>you will find that many of them don't have the slightest idea what an
>abend is.
The technical translation of "abend" (ABnormal END) is "crash," or
more precisely, "be terminated by the supervisor because of an
unrecoverable programming error or violation of standards, or by
a deliberate request of the executing program."
I don't recall running into the word before the arrival of OS/360;
does anyone here have an earlier example of its use in the dawn of
the modern computer age (as opposed to the afternoon?)
Joe Morris
Joe Morris
>Julian Thomas wrote:
>> Someone who never had to use an o24 to punch alpha data?
>All the 024s I ever fixed in my IBM CE days had alpha keyboards. Do
>you perhaps mean the 011 which was a different kettle of fish
>altogether?
Um...024's with alpha keyboards? Are you sure that you don't mean the
026 instead?
I'll admit that I've seen only a very few 024 keypunches, but it was
always my understanding that they were the numeric-only equivalent
of the 026. If there were 024s with alpha keyboards (and if you
worked on them as a CE I'll accept your authority to say that they
existed), what was the difference between an alpha 024 and an 026?
Joe Morris
(Crosspost to alt.folklore.urban deleted)
Joe Morris
>Karen J. Cravens (silve...@phoenyx.net) writes:
>> "Victor Eijkhout" eijk...@nala.cs.utk.edu wrote:
>> Which brings up, as long as I'm crossposting to afc anyway, the
>> expression/command "vary," which seems to be a Blue exclusive, and which no
> Whilst keeping the operating system (eg. MFT or MVT) running,
> this command could "vary" devices online or offline, thereby
> allowing other running jobs to continue without interruption,
> providing the device in question wasn't being used. If a job
> was using such a device, it was abended.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
No (or at least not in my experience). See below...
The "VARY" command would change (i.e, "vary") the status of a device.
In its original usage IIRC the only change possible was to make the
device online (available for use) or offline (unavailable). Just
how the word "vary" came to be used as the command is one bit of
trivia I've never known, but it's possible that the word was chosen
to avoid having to parse multiple syntax possibilities if the function
were implemented as a special case of some other command (such as SET).
(This is pure speculation; anyone with facts is invited to post a
correction.)
The VARY cuu,ONLINE command was immediately executed so that the next
time the system allocation routines needed a device they would consider
the device at address "cuu" to be a candidate. The VARY cuu,OFFLINE
command, however, had no immediate impact except to set the *pending
offline* bit in the UCB (Unit Control Block). The next time the
scheduler entered its allocation routines any devices marked "pending
offline" and not currently allocated were actually set offline. (The
use and handling of the VARY command has evolved over the years; the
comments here apply to the original OS/360 implementation.)
I never saw any implementation that would kill a running job because
one of its devices was the target of a VARY cuu,OFFLINE command. The
scheduler might fail a job during allocation if it required the use of
devices that were offline and which the operator refused to bring online,
but once a job step began execution any devices it had allocated
remained available to it regardless of the operator's use of the
VARY OFFLINE command.
Joe Morris
Marco S Hyman
> The technical translation of "abend" (ABnormal END) is "crash," or
> more precisely, "be terminated by the supervisor because of an
> unrecoverable programming error or violation of standards, or by
> a deliberate request of the executing program."
[alt.folklore.urban removed]
IBM speak. In the Burroughs world it was DSED (usually pronounced
DEE ESS'd). Short for "discontinued" but some insisted it was really
an acronym for "Deep Sixed".
There were a bunch of variations. Examples:
D-DSED improper use of the [D]atacomm system
F-DSED [F]ault, e.g. divide by zero
I-DSED [I]nput/Output error
O-DSED the [O]perator killed the job/program
R-DSED out of allocated [R]esources
U-DSED [U]nknown failure
?-DSED Worse than U-DSED
Perhaps this is still used in UNISYS shops?
// marc
yu...@bgs.com
jcmo...@linus.mitre.org wrote:
.
>
> The technical translation of "abend" (ABnormal END) is "crash," or
> more precisely, "be terminated by the supervisor because of an
> unrecoverable programming error or violation of standards, or by
> a deliberate request of the executing program."
>
> does anyone here have an earlier example of its use in the dawn of
> the modern computer age (as opposed to the afternoon?)
>
> Joe Morris
>
I can't swear to it, but I thought I saw a lot of those while writing FORTRAN
for a 7044 in 1968. Could be memory parity, but I never worked much with
360's and I know I've seen my share of abends.
Joe Yuska
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Bob Shair (E-Mail Only)
: spal...@iol.ie (Nick Spalding) writes:
: >Julian Thomas wrote:
Both the 024 and the 026 had alpha keyboards. The 026 was a
PRINTING card punch, while the 024 just made the holes.
IIRC, the 010 was the electric, numeric keypunch, but I've
not yet seen one. I did fiddle around with an 001 at the
Moorman Manufacturing which they kept as a souvenir.
And I once punched a card with a Swiss Army knife, but that was
an emergency.
--
Bob Shair Open Systems Consultant
bsh...@advancenet.net Champaign, Illinois
John L. Pearlman
I was at MITRE Bedford (MA) for many years and we had a 7090 (STRETCH)
machine from sometime in the early 60s. I used that machine a lot and I
seem to remember that "ABEND" was the usual term used for an error
termination (I'll have to dig out my old manuals one of these days).
Cheers,
John
--
John L. Pearlman <j...@tapuach.tiac.net> or <j.pea...@ieee.org>
If one man calls you a donkey, pay him no heed. If two men call you
a donkey, get yourself a saddle. (ancient Rabbinic saying)
Nick Spalding
> Um...024's with alpha keyboards? Are you sure that you don't mean the
> 026 instead?
>
> I'll admit that I've seen only a very few 024 keypunches, but it was
> always my understanding that they were the numeric-only equivalent
> of the 026. If there were 024s with alpha keyboards (and if you
> worked on them as a CE I'll accept your authority to say that they
> existed), what was the difference between an alpha 024 and an 026?
I think the difference was that the 026 had the print mechanism. I
never saw any sort of keypunch with a numeric only keyboard and I am
pretty certain I had 024s and 026s on my patch.
--
Nick Spalding
Nick Spalding
> what i don't have a strong recollection of ... but wasn't there something
> of similar shape that CEs used on 360 capacitor ROM
For the capacitor ROM in the /30 I used a plain old keypunch - the
cards were mylar replicas of punch cards. You had to dup carefully
one column at a time up to where you were changing something as there
were often a *lot* of holes in a column.
--
Nick Spalding
John Francis
Deacon B. <deke.sp...@generous.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 18 Apr 1999 17:42:51 +0100,
>slavins.at.hearsay.demon.co.uk@localhost (Simon Slavin) wrote:
>
>>> How about someone who never used an 026/029 or an ASR 33? Someone who
>>> can't parse the RJE acronym? Someone who never programmed in
>>> (Algol/Cobol/PLI, pick one or more)?
>
>>Gentlemen, your cross-post to alt.folklore.urban obliges you to
>>expand the above acronyms, even though 90% of the people who used
>>the acronyms wouldn't recognise the expansions and 99% of the
>>readers of AFU don't care. Silly, isn't it.
>
>Those aren't acronyms, they are model numbers. (With the exception of
>RJE, and the point there was to test the knowledge of those who
>posted.)
Really? ASR isn't an acronym? Algol, maybe - it's a contraction.
COBOL is half way in between, but certainly looks more like an acronym.
And PL/1 (miplespt as PLI) is certainly at least half an acronym.
Nick Spalding
> I was at MITRE Bedford (MA) for many years and we had a 7090 (STRETCH)
> machine from sometime in the early 60s. I used that machine a lot and I
> seem to remember that "ABEND" was the usual term used for an error
> termination (I'll have to dig out my old manuals one of these days).
7090 was not Stretch. That was 7030, but was not usually referred to
as such.
--
Nick Spalding
John L. Pearlman
Whoops, you're right. I meant 7030, it replaced our 7090 and remained
our main computer until we got a 360/50, at which point it was relegated
to more specialized use (mostly high precision compute-intensive
applications), and we _did_ call it "STRETCH", its assembly language was
called SAP (STRETCH Assembly Program) IIRC
J. Chris Hausler
>And I once punched a card with a Swiss Army knife, but that was
>an emergency.
specifically to do that would have been useful ;-)
John Everett
>
>I'll go you 2" better - 3" tape on the Datamatic 1000.
>
Are we the only two people who remember the Datamatic 1000? I was going to
mention its tape drives with the "Volkswagen wheel" tape reels, but I wasn't
sure anyone would believe me. When I joined Honeywell EDP in Brighton, Mass,
there was still a working D-1000 there. It was being used to maintain the
card decks for the Gardner-Denver wire-wrap machines used to wrap the
backplanes on the H-200.
--
jeve...@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Things have gotten so bad I feel the need to disguise my email address.
And I don't like this explanation because I just hate long signatures.
John Everett
says...
>
>Really? ASR isn't an acronym?
Automatic Send/Receive, as opposed to KSR, Keyboard Send/Receive.
Donald Tees
rid of CPU heat.
>Joe Morris
John Varela
wrote:
> Really? ASR isn't an acronym?
No, it's an initialism.
--
John "here we go again" Varela
John Varela
> I was at MITRE Bedford (MA) for many years and we had a 7090 (STRETCH)
> machine from sometime in the early 60s.
1963
--
John Varela
Karen J. Cravens
3dtlgU...@user-2iveh9a.dialup.mindspring.com>:
>No, it's an initialism.
If the difference between an initialism and an acronym is that the former
isn't pronounced, then you'll pretty much have to accept that *anything*
related to computers is an acronym because it *will* be pronounced
somewhere, sometime.
Even vi, purists notwithstanding. *Especially* vi, because that's exactly
what you do with it, innit?
Karen "rather use edlin" Cravens
John Francis
John Varela <jva...@mind.spring.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 19 Apr 1999 17:49:47, jfra...@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
>wrote:
>
>> Really? ASR isn't an acronym?
>
Whatever. It's covered by the BOA, at any rate.
--
John "Walks like a BOA" Francis
John L. Pearlman
>
> Nick Spalding wrote:
> >
> > John L. Pearlman wrote:
> >
(snip)
> Whoops, you're right. I meant 7030, it replaced our 7090 and remained
> our main computer until we got a 360/50, at which point it was relegated
> to more specialized use (mostly high precision compute-intensive
> applications), and we _did_ call it "STRETCH", its assembly language was
> called SAP (STRETCH Assembly Program) IIRC
>
> Cheers,
>
> John
Whoops again, that should have been "STRAP" instead of "SAP"
Charlie Gibbs
(Joe Morris) writes:
>jt5...@epix.net (Julian Thomas) writes:
>
>>Someone who never had to use an o24 to punch alpha data?
>
>Naw...make that "Someone who never had to use an IBM model 001 punch."
>
>The 001 looked something like a credit card imprinter -- and had one
>button for each of the 12 rows, all mounted on a movable frame that
>had to be moved to the column you wanted to punch. None of that fancy
>"Press the 'minus' key to punch the 11-row" stuff...
The gadget we had was even worse than that. It had a single die
which you had to move up or down to the proper row. I stuck a
sign on it saying "Programmers have priority on this punch!"
because it was often very hard to find an available keypunch.
--
cgi...@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs)
Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply.
Charlie Gibbs
(Victor Eijkhout) writes:
>Karen J. Cravens <silve...@phoenyx.net> writes:
>
>> Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
>> uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout.
> ^^^^^^^^
>Speaking of things a newcomer would not recognise.
That's part of a hymn, isn't it? "Abend with me..."
Lon Stowell
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <ly...@garlic.com> wrote:
>
>how 'bout all those little tools in the CE toolkit for working on
>selectric typewriters ... I ordered a CE tooklit once because I wanted
>to keept a set of tools in my office for working on things ... but
>maybe half of the stuff in the briefcase i never used (it also took me
>several weeks to week the order accepted ... apparently you just don't
>have people ordering one of those things).
Please. I still have a "Hex and Fluted Key Set" in prime shape,
also 2 cycle wheels, a coupla spring hooks [still nice and
shiny after almost 30 years], a coupla the locking spring
hooks, a Teletype bending tool, a Relay Adjust tool, a wire
relay burnishing pen [complete with spare blades], mirrors,
set of Teletype thickness guages, etc. etc. And in a nice
genuine wood case yet.
Not to mention half a dozen 16mm film cans still full of
official IBM set screws, springs, shims, tilt/rotate dogbone,
and a set of tilt and rotate tapes.
And all of them WILL be useful some day, you betcha.
Lon Stowell
>
>Really? ASR isn't an acronym? Algol, maybe - it's a contraction.
>COBOL is half way in between, but certainly looks more like an acronym.
>And PL/1 (miplespt as PLI) is certainly at least half an acronym.
ASR/KSR, all this bithead talk is making me so nauseous I
could just hang my head over the bitbucket and REXX.
Eggshually, I have a PL/I manual, with an "I" as in Intel
if anyone would care to take you up on your statement
incorrectly claiming that PL/I is a mipsletting of PL/1.
Erlend Pettersen
>>What _is_ a new user? Someone who started after micros came out, 1975
>>or later?
>In the context of the Internet and Usenet, I'd say it is someone who knows no
>other way to connect to the Internet but PPP (but doesn't realize that's what
>he's using), doesn't know what a dumb terminal is or what ASCII is, may have
>heard of Unix but has no real idea of what it is or what a shell account is,
>uses colorful metaphors such as "surfing" and/or "cyber-something" in a vain
>attempt to describe something he hasn't a chance in hell of understanding,
>and someone who without "point and click" could not operate a computer in
>order to save his life. (Oh, and if he gives such matters any thought at
>all, he probably thinks that Microsoft invented multi-tasking operating
>systems.)
Sounds like most of my friends, then.
-Erlend Pettersen- puz...@fix.no
Steve Flynn
<deke.sp...@generous.net> writes
>>>> Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
>>>> uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout.
> ^^^^^^^^
>>>Speaking of things a newcomer would not recognise.
>
>>Oh, gimme a break! _I_ recognise this, and the first computer I ever
>>touched was an Apple ][. Unless I deserve to qualify as ancient, I
>>think that there should be some other criterion for newcomerness.
>
>Perhaps *you* recognize it, but if you start looking though Big Dics,
>you will find that many of them don't have the slightest idea what an
>abend is.
I suppose you could pass the test if you knew what an ABEND was and more
specifically, what an SB37 abend was, or even an S806 or an S222
(for the terminally bored, an SB37 is a space failure on IBM's MVS[1]
Operating System, an S806 is usually a "program not found" type message
[probably mispelled the program name] and and S222 means the operator
cancelled your job, either due to incorrect coding or maybe he was just
in a bad mood...]
[1] Yes, OK - OS/390 then....
--
Steve Flynn
kw...@alianet.alia.org.au
jfra...@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis) wrote:
>
> Really? ASR isn't an acronym? Algol, maybe - it's a contraction.
> COBOL is half way in between, but certainly looks more like an acronym.
> And PL/1 (miplespt as PLI) is certainly at least half an acronym.
>
My recollection is that IBM, who "invented" PL/I spelt it that way. But none
of us called it "pli".
And from the PL/I FAQ at
http://www.uni-giessen.de/faq/archiv/computer-lang.pli-faq/msg00000.html
>There is some controvesy over the name -- whether it is PL/I
>or PL/1. The first manuals (for the first compiler, the
>IBM PL/I (F) compiler) called it PL/I, not PL/1. The ANSI
>standard calls it PL/I. The title of the first reference
>manual is:
>IBM, "PL/I Language Reference", 1965.
>
>The title of the manual for the first compiler is:
>"IBM System 360 PL/I (F) Language Reference Manual", 1966.
>
>Since then, almost all manufacturers and textbooks
>called it PL/I.
Kerry "Oh Lord it's hard to be pedantic, with a memory like mine" Webb
Gustaf Erikson
>
> On Sat, 17 Apr 1999 20:43:52, spal...@iol.ie (Nick Spalding) wrote:
>
> > You are quite right, I should have said 001. At one stage in my
> > career I punched hundreds of cards of Fortran on one of those.
>
> Lordy! What did you do to deserve that?
>
> I always thought the thing was just for emergency use to reproduce a folded,
> spindled, or otherwise mutilated card.
^^^^^^^^
>
> --
> John Varela
> (delete . between mind and spring to e-mail me)
What does "spindled" mean?
/g.
Which English ain't his native tongue.
--
Gustaf Erikson <---*---> 59*19'N 18*05'E
<http://www.f.kth.se/~f92-ger/>
Ask not what GNU can do for you,
but what you can do for GNU.
Jeffrey Keith Boulier
[afu removed from newsgroups]
In article <7fg5dp$fdc$1...@news.igs.net>,
Donald Tees <don...@willmack.com> wrote:
>>
>Or cooled their pop by placing in the 20 ton air conditioner designed to get
>rid of CPU heat.
Even "modern" 3390 disk drives put out enough heat that I can use them as
a drier when I've been caught out in the rain. However, given the monthly
head crashes, they're still the part of our current mainframe that I am
going to be least sorry to see waddling out the door.
--Jeffrey Boulier
Deacon B.
wrote:
>> I always thought the thing was just for emergency use to reproduce a folded,
>> spindled, or otherwise mutilated card.
> ^^^^^^^^
>What does "spindled" mean?
It means to jab with a nail.
Next to the cash register in the restaurant, you'll see a nail upon
which they jab the checks as people pay their bills. The device is
more properly called a spindle, and a paper which has been jabbed on a
spindle has been spindled.
I remember seeing them in offices, especially retail offices and
shipping offices, in the 1950s. They were mostly replaced by
clipboards by the 1970s.
They strike me as inherently hazardous, but I don't think OSHA had any
rules against them, or restaurants wouldn't keep using them. If you
stick more than a half inch of stuff in a clipboard, they tend to fall
out, but you can stick 3-4" of papers on a spindle if you try really
hard.
deke
Nick Spalding
> It means to jab with a nail.
>
> Next to the cash register in the restaurant, you'll see a nail upon
> which they jab the checks as people pay their bills. The device is
> more properly called a spindle, and a paper which has been jabbed on a
> spindle has been spindled.
>
> I remember seeing them in offices, especially retail offices and
> shipping offices, in the 1950s. They were mostly replaced by
> clipboards by the 1970s.
My household accounting system consists of one of those.
--
Nick Spalding
Joe Morris
>I think the difference was that the 026 had the print mechanism. I
>never saw any sort of keypunch with a numeric only keyboard and I am
>pretty certain I had 024s and 026s on my patch.
You're probably right; having a whole different machine type just
to support a few more keys on the keyboard would be somewhat more
overkill than having a different machine to support printing (which
would require additional features on the frame). And now that you
mention it I don't think that any of the 024s I saw had printing
capability.
Gawd...thinking about this brought back the (not particularly fond)
memories of trying to thread the $#%*(& ink ribbon into the print
mechanism of 026 and 029 punches. Small wonder that most shops
allowed the print level to approach invisiblity before anyone would
take the time to put in a new ribbon.
Joe Morris
John Gilmer
over other devices.
1. It only requires one hand to place a piece of paper on the spindle.
2. Papers are automatically kept in order.
3. The paper is "marked" so that everyone now knows that it was placed on
the spindle at one time.
--
_______________________
President Clinton is a Rapist! -- But, that's OK.
John Gil...@Crosslink.net
Peter Seebach
Gustaf Erikson <f92...@nada.kth.se> wrote:
>What does "spindled" mean?
There used to be (still are?) objects which look very much like a piece of
wood with a long (6" or more) thin sharp nail sticking up out of them; one
used them to keep files together. You can see a fair collection of them in
the pre-feature part of _The Meaning of Life_.
-s
--
Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Will work for interesting hardware. http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/
Visit my new ISP <URL:http://www.plethora.net/> --- More Net, Less Spam!
M.J.Powell
<spal...@iol.ie> writes
This is the Editor's Spike surely?
--
Mike The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.
J. Chris Hausler
>The spindle as a temporary storage place for paper has several advantages
>over other devices.
>
>1. It only requires one hand to place a piece of paper on the spindle.
>
>2. Papers are automatically kept in order.
>
>3. The paper is "marked" so that everyone now knows that it was placed on
>the spindle at one time.
pointy thing, real easy to impale body parts like
hands on. Definitely not OSHA approved :-)
Sergej Roytman
>> I always thought the thing was just for emergency use to reproduce a folded,
>> spindled, or otherwise mutilated card.
> ^^^^^^^^
>What does "spindled" mean?
I always thought it referred to an ancient piece of desk furniture
which was used to keep small papers in one place. This thing consisted
of a vertical spike of oh, about 10--15 cm, upon which one was expected
to impale said papers.
It sounds like a fairly uh..., uninformed thing to stick a punched
card on a spindle, but I guess it could have been done at some point,
by someone who had a fundamental lack of understanding of the
technology. Same as sticking floppies up with magnets.
The desk spindle was rendered obsolete, by the way, by the 1979
invention of the Messy Desk.
--
Sergej Roytman
Rob Nicholson
Sounds like a spike to me. Microsoft Word has a spike in it which operates in a
similar manner. Each time you "spike" some text, it gets added to the spike.
Rob.
Charlie Gibbs
deke.sp...@generous.net (Deacon B.) writes:
>On 20 Apr 1999 08:47:15 +0200, Gustaf Erikson <f92...@nada.kth.se>
>wrote:
>
>>What does "spindled" mean?
>
>It means to jab with a nail.
[snip]
>They strike me as inherently hazardous, but I don't think OSHA had any
>rules against them,
Did OSHA even exist back then? Sure you could stick yourself with
a spindle, but in those days people with common sense still outnumbered
bureaucratic busybodies.
Clark
>John Francis <jfra...@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
>>
>>Really? ASR isn't an acronym? Algol, maybe - it's a contraction.
>>COBOL is half way in between, but certainly looks more like an acronym.
>>And PL/1 (miplespt as PLI) is certainly at least half an acronym.
>
>
> could just hang my head over the bitbucket and REXX.
>
> Eggshually, I have a PL/I manual, with an "I" as in Intel
> if anyone would care to take you up on your statement
> incorrectly claiming that PL/I is a mipsletting of PL/1.
Actually, Intel's version for their processors is called PL/M. Go
figure...
--
Clark Geisler | Nortel Networks, Carrier Solutions, Greenwood
Test/Product Engineer | Burnaby, BC, Canada
Asynch (DMT-300, FMT-150) | * remove triple x to reply
John Varela
> jva...@mind.spring.com (John Varela) writes:
> > I always thought the thing was just for emergency use to reproduce a folded,
> > spindled, or otherwise mutilated card.
> ^^^^^^^^
> What does "spindled" mean?
My phrase was a play on the fact that it was once common to find the words "Do
not fold, spindle, or mutilate" printed on IBM punch cards that were printed
as forms or checks. At one time I used to receive my paycheck on a punched
card.
Victor Eijkhout
> >>>> Of course, if it didn't recognize the NO CARRIER (which also wasn't
> >>>> uncommon), it would be abending on a timeout.
> > ^^^^^^^^
> >>>Speaking of things a newcomer would not recognise.
> I suppose you could pass the test if you knew what an ABEND was and more
> specifically, what an SB37 abend was, or even an S806 or an S222
Hm? I know of ABENDs but not SB37.
> (for the terminally bored, an SB37 is a space failure on IBM's MVS[1]
Ah. I used TSO & CMS. I got ABEND 0C4 and sometimes 0C3.
Memory overwrites, typically. Very easy to do in Fortran.
--
Victor Eijkhout
"Real programmers don't use array bound checking, because it prevents
you from using negative indices and modifying the operating system."
Julian Thomas
at 08:00 PM, jeve...@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) said:
>Are we the only two people who remember the Datamatic 1000? I was going
>to mention its tape drives with the "Volkswagen wheel" tape reels, but I
>wasn't sure anyone would believe me. When I joined Honeywell EDP in
>Brighton, Mass, there was still a working D-1000 there. It was being
>used to maintain the card decks for the Gardner-Denver wire-wrap
>machines used to wrap the backplanes on the H-200.
We seem to be. I certainly remember making the comparison to the VW
wheels at the time. Anyone who ever heard the noise from the tape room
(the tape drives were typically in a room separate from the console)
during a tape sort isn't going to forget it, though.
I worked for them from 1956 until around 1960 - and then worked on an 800
at a client site for a while longer, and also did some programming for the
400. I can remember some of the folks who did some of the wiring programs
referring to the "GD machines" with provocation.
--
Julian Thomas: jt 5555 at epix dot net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove numerics for email
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
-- --
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
Julian Thomas
at 04:09 PM, bsh...@male.advancenet.net (Bob Shair (E-Mail Only)) said:
>Both the 024 and the 026 had alpha keyboards. The 026 was a PRINTING
>card punch, while the 024 just made the holes.
Right about the difference between the 024 and the 026 - but I have a
fairly good recollection of seeing some smaller numeric only keyboards in
some data entry shops.
--
Julian Thomas: jt 5555 at epix dot net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove numerics for email
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
-- --
A bus station is where the the bus stops.
A train station is where the trains stop.
On my desk I have a workstation ...
Crash Johnson
>jva...@mind.spring.com (John Varela) writes:
>
>>
>> On Sat, 17 Apr 1999 20:43:52, spal...@iol.ie (Nick Spalding) wrote:
>>
>> > You are quite right, I should have said 001. At one stage in my
>> > career I punched hundreds of cards of Fortran on one of those.
>>
>> Lordy! What did you do to deserve that?
>>
folded,
>> spindled, or otherwise mutilated card.
> ^^^^^^^^
>
>What does "spindled" mean?
Everyone has referred to the filing system of the spike. This is not really
close to 'spindle'. As I recall this reference [which was printed on early
computer produced billing documents] to spindle was to twist, as into a
cone. This not only caused errors, but hopelessly jammed the card reader.
Crash 'do not staple me either' Johnson
gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com
<Followups trimmed, since I doubt AFU is really interested in my
abend stories> :*)
I hope you didn't get many 0C3 abends with Fortran. An 0C3
is a Execute Exception (e.g., you tried to Execute an Execute
instruction). While I suppose that trashed memory could cause
this, I would have expected something to occur prior to this.
I remember getting 0C4s (Protection Exception) and 0C5 (Addressing
Exception) under Fortran, although I did once get an 0C1 (Operation
Exception) when I managed to overrun the bounds of an array and
wrote over the executable code. :-)
Dave
P.S. Standard Disclaimer: I work for them, but I don't speak for them.
Andrew Reid
>
> My recollection is that IBM, who "invented" PL/I spelt it that way. But none
> of us called it "pli".
>
> And from the PL/I FAQ at
> http://www.uni-giessen.de/faq/archiv/computer-lang.pli-faq/msg00000.html
>
> >There is some controvesy over the name -- whether it is PL/I
> >or PL/1. The first manuals (for the first compiler, the
> >IBM PL/I (F) compiler) called it PL/I, not PL/1. The ANSI
> >standard calls it PL/I. The title of the first reference
> >manual is:
> >IBM, "PL/I Language Reference", 1965.
> >
> >The title of the manual for the first compiler is:
> >"IBM System 360 PL/I (F) Language Reference Manual", 1966.
> >
> >Since then, almost all manufacturers and textbooks
> >called it PL/I.
I actually have one of these manuals, being a survivor
of the last class to use PL/I on the mainframe to do third-year
(ObUSA: Junior year) software engineering term projects on
the mainframe. The title is in one of those non-serif,
Helvetica-oid (ObWindows: Arial-oid) fonts in which '1' and
'I' are probably indistinguishable. This probably contributes
to the confusion, although I believe it's spelled out in a
serif font in the body of the manual.
I always figured it was a roman numeral, in line with other
related trivia such as the amazing fact that WATFIV, pronounced
"wat-five", is actually shorthand for "Waterloo Fortran IV",
pronouned "waterloo fortran four".
Andrew "Intraveinous league" Reid
Jim Esler
>
> Gustaf Erikson wrote
>
> >What does "spindled" mean?
>
> Everyone has referred to the filing system of the spike. This is not really
> close to 'spindle'. As I recall this reference [which was printed on early
> computer produced billing documents] to spindle was to twist, as into a
> cone. This not only caused errors, but hopelessly jammed the card reader.
>
> Crash 'do not staple me either' Johnson
From the American Heritage Dictionary:
spindle n. 1.a. A notched stick for spinning fibers into thread by hand.
b. A pin or rod holding a bobbin or spool... 2. Any of various slender
mechanical parts that revolve or serve as axes for larger revolving
parts...
v. To impale or perforate on the spike of a spindle.
Not a word about 'twist'.
--
Jim "how do you survive without staples?" Esler
Helge Moulding
>Crash Johnson wrote:
>> Gustaf Erikson wrote
>> >What does "spindled" mean?
>> computer produced billing documents] to spindle was to
>> twist, as into a cone. This not only caused errors, but
>> hopelessly jammed the card reader.
Looks like our dic makers haven't caught up with
technological jargon, either.
Actually, I don't know if that was the intended meaning,
but it so happens that I, speaking English only as a 2nd
language, got the same meaning from the word as Crash did.
Since I hadn't looked up the word, I had to rely on what
it *might* mean. Well, I wasn't acquainted with the spindle
file, but I knew what a spindle looked like. (I knew about
the nail, but I didn't know that was called a spindle, ok?)
One of the nifty features of the English language is that
when you want to say "make an A into a B" you turn B into a
verb and just say "b A." Hence when I read the exhortation
not to spindle, I took it to mean "don't turn this into
something long and skinny, possibly twisted."
I can hear the screams of outrage from the English majors
in the froup already. But it's true. It ain't elegant, but
if I said that someone had trashed my car, they'd know that
someone had turned my car into trash.
An alternative feature is that if I "apply A to B" then I
might express it as "a B". That's the version of spindle as
a verb that made it into my dictionary. I suspect it is the
"correct" version, for appropriate values of correct.
--
Helge "ESL but now EFL" Moulding
mailto:hmou...@excite.com Just another guy
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1401 with a weird name
Joe Morris
>(for the terminally bored, an SB37 is a space failure on IBM's MVS[1]
>Operating System, an S806 is usually a "program not found" type message
>[probably mispelled the program name] and and S222 means the operator
>cancelled your job, either due to incorrect coding or maybe he was just
>in a bad mood...]
Was the phrase "terminally bored" intended as a pun? <g>
In any case, another test involving ABEND codes would be if the testee
can parse a generic S/360 system abend code. Yes, there are exceptions
(such as the 0Cx series which represent program error traps) but with
most system ABEND codes anyone familiar with what we would now call
the API could identify the primary function that was being attempted
when the system decided to terminate the jobstep.
The three examples above (B37, 806, and 222) all fall into this category.
OBquiz: What is this pattern? Hint: as noted above, abend S222 was
issued if the operator cancelled a job, but if the operator entered
the CANCEL command and told the system to create an ABEND dump, the
ABEND code was S122.
Joe Morris
Dave Daniels
wrote:
> Or cooled their pop by placing in the 20 ton air conditioner designed to
> get
> rid of CPU heat.
Or tried to make their way around the computer room without touching
the floor by climbing over all the kit?
Dave
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Dave Daniels
Morris) wrote:
> OBquiz: What is this pattern? Hint: as noted above, abend S222 was
> issued if the operator cancelled a job, but if the operator entered
The last two digits are the SVC number, e.g. 806 is a failure that
occured when using SVC 6, which is LOAD, IIRC.
Deacon B.
Roytman) wrote:
>It sounds like a fairly uh..., uninformed thing to stick a punched
>card on a spindle, but I guess it could have been done at some point,
>by someone who had a fundamental lack of understanding of the
>technology.
No lack of understanding. I think it was more common that people did
it *deliberately* as a form of protest, especially against public
utility monopolies and other unpleasant creditors.
<UL warning>
There was always the hope that if you punched the *right* holes, and
you didn't get caught, you would get a huge credit applied to your
bill.
</ul warning>
But nobody really believed you wouldn't get caught. Didn't mean we
didn't try, though.
deke
Deacon B.
wrote:
>>They strike me as inherently hazardous, but I don't think OSHA had any
>>rules against them,
>Did OSHA even exist back then? Sure you could stick yourself with
>a spindle, but in those days people with common sense still outnumbered
>bureaucratic busybodies.
In the US of A, there are less than a hundred people with common
sense, but there are *millions* of bureaucratic busybodies.
Spindles largely went out before OSHA came in (it dates from about 30
years ago, IIRC), but they are still common in restaurants.
Seems to me that having steel bungee sticks by cash registers, where
people might grab to keep themselves from falling in wet weather, is a
little more of a safety problem than the shape of toilet seats.
OSHA sure seemed to make a big deal over whether toilet seats made a
complete circuit or had a notch cut out in the front. And to this day,
I can't remember which was supposed to be safer, nor why.[1]
deke
[1] Although I did see a restroom last month that had a cloth towel
gizmo, and I thought *those* went out with OSHA, too, in favor of the
machines that told you to press the button, then dry your hands on
your shirt.
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
Deacon B. (deke.sp...@generous.net) writes:
>
> No lack of understanding. I think it was more common that people did
> it *deliberately* as a form of protest, especially against public
> utility monopolies and other unpleasant creditors.
>
> <UL warning>
>
> There was always the hope that if you punched the *right* holes, and
> you didn't get caught, you would get a huge credit applied to your
> bill.
Back in the early 70's, Bell Canada would send a punched card with
the statement. Computer programmers with access to an 029 (like moi)
could interpret and change these. Of course, fear of the Phone
Police ensured that the cards were returned unmolested, and of course
nobody dared to hook up non-Bell equipment, (as if there was any).
ro...@d139178.stir.ac.uk
: On Tue, 20 Apr 1999 06:47:15, Gustaf Erikson <f92...@nada.kth.se> wrote:
:> jva...@mind.spring.com (John Varela) writes:
:> > I always thought the thing was just for emergency use to reproduce a folded,
:> > spindled, or otherwise mutilated card.
:> ^^^^^^^^
:> What does "spindled" mean?
: My phrase was a play on the fact that it was once common to find the words "Do
: not fold, spindle, or mutilate" printed on IBM punch cards that were printed
: as forms or checks. At one time I used to receive my paycheck on a punched
I've heard this phrase before, in the UK, in totally non-computer related
fields.
Is this an IMB'sm that went into popular usage, or was it known before then.
gcash
> <UL warning>
>
> There was always the hope that if you punched the *right* holes, and
> you didn't get caught, you would get a huge credit applied to your
> bill.
>
> </ul warning>
My mum was a programmer, long enough ago that her early college
experience included the IBM 1401 machines that used jumper boards.
And long enough ago that she wasn't a "software engineer"
With all her EBCDIC tables and card info around, I figured out out the
electric company's card record format, and repunched an almost
identical card with a "-" in the appropriate column.
> But nobody really believed you wouldn't get caught. Didn't mean we
> didn't try, though.
Yep. Got caught. By mom though, when we got a big check the next
month. Much worse than being caught by the government. :)
She didn't think my "random" card punching on her work machine was so
cute after that.
-gc
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