Flamatrons

[David Kuder]

Way back in my misspent youth I hung out at Heidelberg College's
computer center even though I was a lowly high school student. I found
out that I wasn't the lowest of the low though when the local business
college's COBOL class began to come in two nights a week to do their
lab work.

The machine being used was a Varian running some kind of real time OS
and a ASR 33 for a console. One feature was the ability to schedule a
program to run at a fixed time. The lab instructor for the COBOL class
had gotten confident that she could run the machine without help so the
center's student employee's no longer had to stick around and hold
hands much to their delight (COBOL didn't excite any of them).

One afternoon after my classes I came into the center and discovered some
faces alternating between chagrinned and giggly. Seems someone had written
a program to type out
WARNING: THE FLAMATRON TUBES ARE OVERHEATING
with suitable bells and general clanking from the ASR 33. The program was
scheduled to go off during the COBOL lab and then repeat every few minutes.
Of course none of the students got the panicy phone call, the center's
director did. Hence the chagrinned students. But the image of the COBOL
lab instructor in panic was enough to produce giggles.

To this day things that annoy people at regular intervals are, to me,
FLAMATRONS.
--
David A. Kuder Now what coach?
415 438-2003 da...@indetech.com {uunet,sun,sharkey,pacbell}!indetech!david