Any disastrous or amusing upgrade stories?

[dawn]

These stories need not be pick-specific. I'm teaching a couple of
courses this semester and wanted to give a few upgrades-that-went-awry
stories to a class. I am looking specifically for anything related to
the development or run-time software environments, such as those
related to version skew or suffering new bad things in exchange for
the advantages of the upgrade, or simple upgrades that end up with
long outages for a company, or ...

Example of an upgrade pattern I'm calling NEW BUGS OR UNDESIRED SIDE-
EFFECTS. We probably all have tons of stories of this type, so much so
that I don't have many logged in my brain where I can remember them.
I've probably told this one here before. It does not qualify as a
disaster, just a little example of what we have all seen in various
ways with upgrade:

In the late 70's we upgraded the operating system on a Pr1me computer,
at which point the new COBOL compiler failed to handle addition. ADD 1
to COUNTER no longer compiled. We needed other features and/or it
would have been difficult to back off the upgrade, so we moved
forward. Any already-compiled programs were fine, but for everything
we were writing or changing and compiling again, we had to remove all
addition. Fortunately multiplication and subtraction were both working
so we could multiply by -1 and subtract. Maybe a month later we got a
patch from the vendor and changed all programs back.

I have a terrible Novell Upgrade story that classifies in the pattern
of EXTENDED DOWNTIME. There are also CORRUPTED BACKUPS stories when a
restore is in order.

One of my favorite patterns is what I will call CASCADING UPGRADES --
when you have to upgrade in order to correct one problem, and that
causes you to have to upgrade something else, which causes you to
upgrade something else, ... a cascade of upgrades to fix a little
problem, sometimes resulting in HARDWARE UPGRADE REQUIRED.

Then there is the upgrade pattern of IMPOSSIBLE VERSIONS where you
need to upgrade software A in a way that causes another upgrade to
software B, but B requires that you upgrade C to a version
incompatible with software A (or some other similar variation). I know
I have encountered that one, but the details are very fuzzy. More
often the upgrade of C would be incompatible with another piece of
software, D, that is also needed in that environment.

Other patterns might be DOWNGRADE REQUIRED. In order to upgrade or
install once piece of software, you need to downgrade another.

I have not seen a list of such "upgrade patterns" so if you have a
pattern to add to those above, that would be super.

If you have any good stories that can be written in a way that is
short enough to read to a class to illustrate the point that simple-
sounding upgrades sometimes grow into big projects, perhaps holding up
companies for days, please pass them along. If for some reason you do
not want to post a story here, feel free to email me dwolt at tincat-
group dot com. Thanks. --dawn

[JJCSR]

Dawn:

This tale goes back to my pre-PICK days, back when terms like “head
crash” were synonymous with “cardiac arrest”. I had been operating
on a series of IBM System 360’s, having gone from a 360/25 to 360/30,
then to a 360/40. Due to a couple of major application installations
planned (on-line wholesale order entry, and polling of 30-store POS
system), the need for another upgrade to hardware led to replacement
of the IBM 360 system with a 370/138.

At the same time the hardware was placed on order, the implementation
of programming for the order entry system began. I contracted with a
gentleman from Cheney, Wash., to write our COBOL software. When I
told him of our hardware-upgrade, and advised that we would be running
on DOS/VS rel. 34 (which was then a public domain product), my friend,
the programmer, told me he could obtain a version, FREE of charge, and
have it shipped directly to me.

The 370/138 computer was being installed by a 3rd-party maintenance
firm. All pieces of hardware were in place, consuming much of the
18ft. x 26ft. computer room. It was time to fire up the system,
requiring the disk with the operating , the “SYSRES disk”, to be
mounted into one of the two “pizza oven style” disk cabinets (there
were 2 disks per cabinet – each disk accounting for 100MB of storage –
WOW!). I handed the disk to the tech from the maintenance firm, and
he promptly refused, telling me that it was against his company’s
policy for any technician to place a disk into a disk cabinet.

So, I was left with the honor of firing up the 370/138 for the first
time. The disk began to spin, faster and faster, until it reached
the speed where the read/write heads would extract from their
compartments, and reach out between the 10 platters. For those who
may not be aware, read/write heads never come in contact with the
surface of the platters; they float above the platter-surface (at
least, not in NORMAL conditions). But this would be one of those
ABNORMAL conditions.

Unbeknownst to me, the cover of the disk had been impregnated by a
forklift at the airport. When holding the disk to remove the cover,
the damaged portion of the platters were at the rear of the disk – I
never saw that damage. Several of the middle platters had been bent
up to about a 45-degree angle. As the drive reached speed for the
heads to make their move into the space between the platters, the bent
platters grabbed hold of the heads and immediately spewed fragments of
the heads, and the platters, along with oxide dust, completely
covering the window of the cabinet. This calamity was accompanied by
a shrill sound I haven’t heard the likes of, until a few summers ago
when I first heard the cry of a fisher cat; much akin to the sound of
a screaming woman.

This was my first, and only, “head crash” experience. I had heard
about them, but assumed I’d never have to worry about being a part of
one. And, I quickly understood why the technician refused to put the
disk into the cabinet. He was free of responsibility.

The drive was rebuilt at a cost of $4000 (cheap by today’s
standards). We were able to obtain another DOS/VS disk, which the
programmer-friend used to build another SYSRES disk. By some
miracle, or collection of same, we were up and running within 24 hours
of the incident that brought us to our knees.

And one footnote: this upgrade to the 370/138 created a need to rent
the 12’ x 20’ room, adjacent to the 18’ x 26’ computer room, to house
a 20-ton air-conditioner. A hole on the base of the wall between the
rooms was used to feed the cold air into the raised-floor computer
room. The floor beneath the raised-floor was the plenum for the
cold air to rise through strategically-placed, perforated floor-
tiles.

Oh, those were the days.

Jim Cronin
Dir. MIS
Kittery Trading Post

[dawn]

Good story. That has cascading upgrades (even of the physical plant
variety) as well as the damaged hardware story. I also like the policy
issue where you had to be the one to load the platters.

It reminded me of other unexpected hardware failures, such as a fire
in either a terminal or an 8088 machine (seems like I would remember
which, but...).

Thanks, Jim. --dawn

[Peter McMurray]

Hi Dawn
Given the Hitachi Sidekick debacle this week do you really need any other
stories :-)
I'll toss in a couple
Never under-estimate the ingenuity of the Company Secretary when they
descend from on high to show mere mortals how it is done. The early
Reality's came with a cartridge tape. The tape was in a thick perspex box
with a one eighth thick steel base and a cut-out for a steel locating pin.
Alwyn got it in upside down and backwards through sheer brute force. The
engineer had to take to the case with a two foot wrecking bar to get it out
. AWA supplied half inch tape drive as a replacement and Alwyn struck
again. The unit was mounted vertically so a full tape would spill off when
you first loaded it. This did not bother Alwyn who just threaded it onto
the second spool and hit GO. Bang instant mylar boot lace. He did it so
often that the engineers gave him a pair of scissors and a batch of end of
tape stickers to do the repairs himself.
Early DEC gear was quite delicate and large. Unlike Realitys it needed
false floors, air-conditioning and much cossetting. The software engineer
arrived to finish the install after much building work just in time to see
the truckers bringing the heavy system in. Method simple. Drop six foot
high crate off truck onto tyres then roll it end for end down the corridor.
Delivery of replacement was done by alternative truckers.
Original IBM PCs were extremely badly designed electrically with a symmetric
plug for the power supply. I warned eager young son of client "never work
on the innards on your own and always use a static strap and always
disconnect the power". Eager beaver promptly came in to empty office on
Saturday afternoon and was discovered lying half conscious against the wall
with a badly blackened PC on the table. No strap, no power disconnect and
the plug in the wrong way around.
Micromax was a great multi-user PC in the early '80s but ISAM and BTREE
files were not the simplest things to recover after a power failure. I
preached always keep a daily save off site and I refused to supply without a
UPS. So this site had eight girls working flat out taking a 1000 new
customers a week and dealing with 12 trucks doing up to 50 deliveries a day
each, mostly to individual home accounts. The office was on the first floor
(second to Yanks) and the UPS was mounted outside on the wall. The works
foreman went in to get the girls to power off, however his off-sider put a
ladder up on the wall, hopped up and yanked the UPS before the foreman had
chance to get a word out. He discovered that the "ladies" had a very clear
command of some of the more basic terms in the English language. It then
transpired that they had all been too busy to do a regular backup in fact
for 7 weeks as it turned out - I had labelled tapes Moday, Tuesday... Week1
Week 2..... Month 1, Month2 and Month 3 plus I had done a full save myself
when on site a fortnight before. I was 3000 miles away at a client in South
Western Australia so I said use mine. AH! the boss had felt guilty and done
one the week end before. Which tape did he use? Mine! He loaded it and got
a tape error. Much vile language and he fired it into the waste bin fulll
of cigarette ends etc which was duly emptied into the dumpster. This all
happened before they called me again. I told him I could recover tape
errors, not easy but possible, just put the tape in and I will dial up.
That was when I got the full story. I believe the drivers still talk about
the day there was one great rugby forward bottom and two mini skirted
bottoms sticking out of the dumpster for an hour. They found it and heavens
to betsy he had put it back in the box before tossing it so it was oily and
ashy on the outside but OK. I then set about recovering thousands of
accounts over a 300 baud acoustic coupler on a country phone line.
AAAArrrrgghh!
Have Fun and always back up on equipment that you own in a separate
building. Clouds can rain and vanish :-)
Peter McMurray

[Ross Ferris]

Under the heading of unexpected hardware failures ...

many moons ago we were planning a migration for a new client that was
to take place on 1st July (first day of the new financial year here).
We had done a few trial data conversion runs & fine tuned everything
and were in count down mode.

The existing hardware was an early "micro" (name escapes me, but it
was the size of a decent mini-computer)

Anyway, on the 29th June I was visiting the site to clear out the old
conversion data in anticipation of the "real" stuff, and to do some
last minute checks for the new Wyse 50 terminals --> I do remember
that the system they were moving to was "R83 pick" running on a top of
the line 20Mhz Compaq 386 style system.

Anyway, whilst I was onsite, the Murphy Switch in the old server got
tripped, something shorted, and a small electrical fire broke out
inside the main system cabinet - anything the fire didn't melt, the
powder from the fire extinguisher took care of!!.... to cut a long
story short, we ended up getting them "live" that night, with data
from the previous conversion that was a week old --> if we hadn't done
the trial conversions, they would have had NOTHING, as the company
that made the old system had disappeared, and if the fire had happened
an hour or so later, one of the jobs I had planned on doing was to
clear the data files out ready to do the "real" conversion!

These days we take backups of trial conversion data 'cause you just
never know!

[Art Martz]

Ross Ferris wrote:
> Under the heading of unexpected hardware failures ...
>

Brings to mind a Microdata hard disk drive upgrade. What the FE failed
to take into account was the power in this business park was 240V SINGLE
phase (from the olden days), and he proceeded to hook up two phases
like he always did, thinking each phase was 110v. When he flipped the
power switch, and 480V went thru the power supply, the resulting flash
was spectacular, to say the least! The FE was looking right at it at the
time, and it took a few minutes before the stars stopped swimming about
and he could see again! One new power supply on order shortly there-after.
Art

[JJCSR]

Dawn:

Coming off of General Automation, back in the early 90's, and
converting to Advanced Pick, I stumbled onto two particular software
"gotcha's", and they both pertained to nuances between some of GA's
BASIC commands, vs. PICK's.

The first one I discovered was that "soundex" was not the same. In
G.A., you could create a soundex table using virtually any number of
characters, where A/P used the first letter, and up to the third
consonant in the string being "soundexed". E.G., consider the words
MADISON and MADISONVILLE. In the case of these two words just shown,
MDSN (ignore vowels) would be used to generate the soundex code -
M325. However, G.A. used all consonants (I believe double-consonants
were considered as one, I.E., "LL" = "L'). G.A.'s soundex codes for
these two words are M325 and M32514, respectively.

I discovered this problem when the first attempt was made to do
soundex-lookup on names of vendors, customers, products - we had
generated them all under G.A.'s PICK Basic, and tried to carry over
the logic to Advanced PICK. Fortunately, G.A. had the source code
for "soundex" on the "BP" file that was distributed with the system,
so I was able to copy it into a subroutine that I named,
"soundx.subrout", using two arguments (ARG1, ARG2). ARG1 was the
string being soundexed; AGR2 was the code generated by the routine.

Once I had the subroutine operational, I had to find every program
that utilized "soundex", either in the form of creating the soundex
code, or using the code to match to the lookup-string entered by the
operator.

Secondly, the BASIC command, "convert", also presented major
differences, mostly in the area of converting "multi-character"
portions of a string to single-character, or other multi-character
portions of a string. Without getting too specific, suffice to say,
another home-grown "subroutine" was needed to replace the short-
comings of Advance PICK's "convert".

These, indeed, were "downgrade" scenarios that grew from "upgrade".

Jim Cronin
Kittery Trading Post

[Peter McMurray]

Hi Dawn
A previous post about fire in a printer jogged the memory of how dumb some
people on help desks can be.
ICL designed a wonderful COLOUR PC that blew the minds of executives used to
sending their requests to the typing pool. Ampol bought a significant
number of them for use in petroleum distributorships around Australia.
These magnificent beasts had been designed for use in the dales of Yorkshire
however they went to places like Alice Springs and Dubbo where people
actually plan to take their holidays in a place where they hope it will
rain. My client was sitting at her desk working on our Pick AP software,
looking out of the window gazing at a 50,000 litre petrol tank and dreaming
of diving in the pool within an hour to esacpe the 45C heat. She suddenly
realised that there was smoke rising from the old ICL gear nearby. She
promptly leapt into action and ripped the plug out of the wall with some
hallooing. Ampol help desk, when called, complained bitterly "didn't you
shut down properly first" :-)
Then of course there is the RTFM only if all else fails type of operator.
National Mutual in Melbourne is built on a quite steep hill. A big IBM shop
with the computer room on the first floor in those days. IBM provided a
massive printer that took those large rolls of paper that you load with a
forklift for test. Operator put paper in and threaded the way they thought
it should go. Press load button. Oh Bother! wrong path. Full roll leaped
out of its cradle and flew across the floor. Unfortunately the building was
a high rise using a steel frame design so the wall was just a block filler
and no match for an angry quarter ton of paper. Well we always needed a
door there and it didn't hit too many cars on its way down to Flinders
Street station.
Peter McMurray

[wjhonson]

My very first job was on the original Reality, which was still running
in 1983 (believe it or don't!)

I was just the night-time computer operator, but I had access to TCL
obviously because I had to run queries and such at night (you can't
run them during the day because it slows the system too much).

At any rate, I discovered that "T" was a shortcut for "Time" and I
thought I'd check out what other shortcuts might exist. So I tried A,
B, C, and so on to see what they did at TCL.

Previously, a tech had setup some kind of shortcut which would "wipe
the disk" (that's what they said) in preparation for a new install.
The shortcut was "\" and of course I found it at midnight or some such
thing, and it just threw up a comment like "Working..." or whatever.
No way to abort it and it was time to go home anyway.

The next day I got a call early to ask "Did anything odd happen last
night?"

So the moral is, don't create shortcuts that do amusing things, like
reformatting the disk.

Will Johnson

[dawn]

Hi Will, long time no see (or are you a different Will Johnson?)
Great story! --dawn

[Kevin Powick]

On Oct 28, 7:07 pm, wjhonson <wjhon...@aol.com> wrote:

> Previously, a tech had setup some kind of shortcut which would "wipe
> the disk" (that's what they said) in preparation for a new install.
> The shortcut was "\"

I worked on a system where somebody did that with the "D" key. Every
production file was cleared and re-loaded with a base set of data.
Not good.

--
Kevin Powick

[frosty]

> On Oct 28, 7:07 pm, wjhonson <wjhon...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Previously, a tech had setup some kind of shortcut which would "wipe
>> the disk" (that's what they said) in preparation for a new install.
>> The shortcut was "\"
>

Kevin Powick wrote:
> I worked on a system where somebody did that with the "D" key. Every
> production file was cleared and re-loaded with a base set of data.
> Not good.

<Eric Idle Voice>You were lucky! On our system, any one key command
would erase the entire hard drive and set the computer room on fire!</EIV>

--
frosty

[Tony Gravagno]

"frosty" wrote:
><Eric Idle Voice>You were lucky! On our system, any one key command
>would erase the entire hard drive and set the computer room on fire!</EIV>

<Graham Chapman>That's nothing! Our system would set us on fire if we
just thought about it. Then the system admin would feed our barbecued
remains to lions who would regurgitate us as full-time developers so
that we could be ridiculed for the rest of our days. Oh yes, and then
the hard drives would be wiped as well.</GC>

[dawn]

LOL. Thanks. --dawn

> --
> frosty

[Peter McMurray]

Hi
Shortcuts are great aren't they :-)
I set up SD for Sort Dictionary in 1977 and still use it today in fact the
AWA support chap, Ints Tumilovics, thought that there was a system error
when he logged in to a site that was not ours and it did not work. OOPS!
Anyway all my clients used it and then a few years later I had to clean
something up so I whacked in DF for Delete File and forgot about it. Many
moons later I had a panic call from a lass who had just lost the main
debtors file. It was only then that I noticed the QWERTY keyboard layout
ASDF so one finger out SD becomes DF. Thank heavens I preached file-saves
and it was early in the day. PHEW!! I changed my approach to shortcuts
Pronto.
Interestingly the dreaded Open Architecture guys fell for the same thing
when they introduced the DELETE verb to replace the much safer ED with P1
when they changed ED to prompt for deletion instead of just doing it. An
installer missed his GET-LIST then entered DELETE DEBTADD goodby to
thousands of addresses. DELETE now prompts as well.
Peter McMurray
"wjhonson" <wjho...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:28ca14c6-e13d-498a...@x5g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

[Peter McMurray]

On A more Reliable note for those that remember punched cards and assembler.
A programmer at a large steel mill in Wales spent six months writing his
program and tracing a fault. Every time he ran the program it kicked off
splendidly then the machine halted (more sad memories of Open Architecture)
One day a great cheer rang around the programmers room he had found it. The
procedure he had to follow in the end was to take the deck of cards and
laboriously align every one with a ruler to check the code as punched.
Bingo! one miss punch produced a command that only the system engineers knew
about ; System Halt
Peter McMurray
"frosty" <fro...@bogus.tld> wrote in message
news:qtednWg3kvGMJ3TX...@centurytel.net...

[RJ]

For those of us who remember punched cards, we also remember to "sight
check".
The IBM programming course for the 702 in 1954 spent two hours on error
checking for each one hour on programming. The part of the course that gave
most of the students trouble was the checking of the validity of a tape or
card read.

Bobj

"Peter McMurray" <excal...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:osKGm.51051$ze1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

[Art Martz]

RJ wrote:
> For those of us who remember punched cards, we also remember to "sight
> check".
> The IBM programming course for the 702 in 1954 spent two hours on error
> checking for each one hour on programming. The part of the course that
> gave most of the students trouble was the checking of the validity of a
> tape or card read.
>
> Bobj

Any one else remember drawing a big "X" on the side of the card deck so
that if you happened to drop or otherwise shuffle the deck, you stood a
chance of getting the cards back into the correct order?
Art

[dawn]

Yes, and it made me laugh audibly to read that. Many real pickies will
not recall this, however, given that Pick, unlike the RDBMS, did not
arise from the world of computer cards (or at least that is one thing
my research has lead me to believe). cheers! --dawn

[roales]

Not only do I remember the colored X's on the side of decks - I
remember card gauges and card needles. Both used to check the
alignment of the punches and to calibrate the machines.

I also remember in my early years of working in assembler on an IBM
360 that you might only get one test run every other day or at the
most daily. You sure learned to desk check your work. And suck up
the keypunch operator that was going to key your coding sheets.
Alot of the habits that I formed in those days are still with me -
like desk checking the code and working with a set of test data with
known results. Pick is so easy that alot of programmers work from the
seat of their pants with sometimes really bad results. Just because it
compiles and runs doesn't mean that it ran correctly.

Anyone remember the "dupe" function of keypunching? It seems to have
been left behind but I still sometimes put that in a data entry
program for the type of field where a great majority of reponses are
the same but not all. For instance, you are entering addresses from
employees in a state, most of those will live in that state, but not
all.

Anyone remember flow charting?

[Bill Cooke]

C'mon

I led the guys writing Autoflow for the 360, and later spent a lot of
time helping to sell it. (it was one of the 'products' that helped us
win a lawsuit against IBM - to stop promising software for free - that
established the market for product software.) Autoflow automatically
drew flowcharts of programs of a variety of languages. On one sales
call / demonstration I was asked the highly technical question by a
pointy-haired boss: why, on a particular page, we had left so much white
space. I of course gulped at this attack on my product' aesthetics,
took a step forward, and declared that the empty area was "meaningful
space", as important as any other part of the chart. My salesman nearly
choked at this reference to Holmes' dog that did not bark.

PHP and apache and frameworks are exciting, but my mind does drift
sometimes back to the good old days.

~ ~ Bill

[Ed Sheehan]

"dawn" <dawnwo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:b5cf0453-822c-43d1...@p35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...

Pick may not have "arisen" from the world of computer cards, but did
"derive" somewhat. We PROCheads may remember that the IH command stood for
"Input Hollerith."

BTW, here's a link to a PROC & Batch manual:

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/microdata/reality/771044_realityProcBatch_77.pdf

Ed

[Peter McMurray]

Autoflow. What about Autocoder? My partner thought that was the death of
programming as we knew it. He liked to keep things simple so one of his
favourite tricks was to keep changing the instruction at address zero and
jump there. Tight code, remember 16Kb was a lot of RAM, but debugging was
to say the least interesting.
My first 4GL was much more sophisticated :-) It used a set of hexadecimal
tables. Each entry represented a binary coded hexadecimal input instruction
that I simply moved in a loop to replace the single INPUT statement using
MOVEP for those old NEAT3 guys.
Peter McMurray
"Bill Cooke" <bco...@cookedata.com> wrote in message
news:hci2b3$ooc$1...@aioe.org...

[Art Martz]

Ed Sheehan wrote:
> BTW, here's a link to a PROC & Batch manual:
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/microdata/reality/771044_realityProcBatch_77.pdf
> Ed

Good Lord! I'd forgotten all about Batch. B/ADD & B/DEL anybody?
I looked at the copyright date on that, 1977, the year before I picked
up my first Reality manual.

My dad, retired from NASA, used to work with an IBM mainframe that had a
JCL language called ProcDef, which to me looked a lot like PROC. On the
same mainframe, there was a documentation processor called "Runoff".
Guess what it looked like? I think Dick and Don did a little "borrowing"
when they wrote Girls.
Art

[frosty]

Art Martz wrote:
> ...My dad, retired from NASA, used to work with an IBM mainframe that

> had a JCL language called ProcDef, which to me looked a lot like
> PROC. On the same mainframe, there was a documentation processor
> called "Runoff". Guess what it looked like? I think Dick and Don did
> a little "borrowing" when they wrote Girls.

I'm quite familiar with RUNOFF, and don't see how it can be compared
to GIRLS. Care to explain?

--
frosty

[Peter McMurray]

Hi Frosty
Art was referring to the RUNOFF report printer on Reality and IBM not the
fabulous database design of GIRLS. They certainly lead the field there I
just wish that they had copied/borrowed/stolen some marketing tips. SAP
success is directly down to IBM marketing skills not the quality of the
design. Oracle as brought to life by Larry Ellison came directly from IBM
research, He however also brought in a marketing guy right from the
beginning - practically over the dead body of his senior tech partner who
just like Dick never understood the need.

Peter McMurray
"frosty" <fro...@bogus.tld> wrote in message

news:fuWdnbxGqbPCR3HX...@centurytel.net...

[wjhonson]

Speaking of punched cards, my first job involved, in part, running a
punch card deck, once a week, that was written in some language SNOBOL
which no one else to my knowledge has ever heard. I suppose it was
related somehow to COBOL, but I never understood how. I believe it
was a language written at Northwestern University (where I was then in
college).

Speaking of RUNOFF, I've only ever worked at a *single* job that ever
used RUNOFF, and they used it a lot, for writing help files and such
for their clients. Of course, being the sort of maverick I am, I had
to modify the menu system to automagically create RUNOFF documents of
the menus, and modify all the help files to allow set-point insertions
within the documents so the menus could be magically pushed into the
runoff help documents without human intervention (or error).

Will Johnson

[Ross Ferris]

Hey Will,

Good news .... you have found someone else who knows about SNOBOL :-)
But my reference is later, "just" past punched cards, running on an
early DEC-11 on RTSE (? I just remember calling is "rastus")

One of the other software companies in town had a comprehensive system
written in Snobol - believe this may have originated from USA ...
perhaps MCBA? (Mini Computer Business Associates)

[Bill Cooke]

Bell Labs.

I could never figure out how to make money with it. What "comprehensive
system" stuff did they do?

It's a string-processing (!) language used in exploring patterns, as in
language recognition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOBOL

[Tony Gravagno]

Bell Labs? Yeah, I remember cancelling an interview that was setup
for me there because I didn't think it would be cool to work for the
phone company. That's probably the biggest DUH moment of my life.
SNOBOL? Yea, I remember it - and APL too, with the funky character
set.

And Ross, it was RSTS on PDP-11, which we also called "ristus".

For anyone who doubts we still have roots going back to punch cards,
I'll just mention that the 80 column terminal to which most of you
guys still code was intended to be compatible with Hollerith cards. I
believe default term width for Windows Terminal and BASH is still 80.

I wish discussions of technology from the current millennium would
spawn so much discussion here. I can see one of you guys trying to
sell a new application, and the prospect Googling to find out what
this Pick thing is about, only to see a bunch of people fondly talking
about punch cards. *buzzer sounds* "Time to look elsewhere."

Looking forward to TL Conference next week...

T

[Ross Ferris]

On Nov 2, 4:45 am, Bill Cooke <bco...@cookedata.com> wrote:
> Bell Labs.
>
> I could never figure out how to make money with it.  What "comprehensive
> system" stuff did they do?
>
> It's a string-processing (!) language used in exploring patterns, as in
> language recognition.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOBOL

They had a full accounting & distribution system, and we are talking
circa 1980. I'm not sure if the "database" was part of Snobol itself,
or something that was written in Snobol, but IIRC it offered fast
BTree access to files, and I think it may have put that pattern
matching capability to use for some of the searching capabilities.

Don't have too many details - I never used it myself, as it was a
"competitor" ... company involved is still around, and they still have
a comprehensive ERP system that is "strong" in building & project
areas that can probably trace it's originas back to that original
system, but I know has been ported across at least 3 different
languages/databases over the past 30 years (or at least they have
offered solutions in 3 different environments, which I assume trace
heritage back to this early product)

[Peter McMurray]

"Tony Gravagno" <address.i...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote in
message news:44pre5194t1uq10he...@4ax.com...
<snip>> I wish discussions of technology from the current millennium would

> spawn so much discussion here. I can see one of you guys trying to
> sell a new application, and the prospect Googling to find out what
> this Pick thing is about, only to see a bunch of people fondly talking
> about punch cards. *buzzer sounds* "Time to look elsewhere."
>
> Looking forward to TL Conference next week...
>
> T
>

<snip>
Interesting reaction. I guess we are not allowed to reminisce :-)
Just out of interest I did google as suggested and got some interesting
results from
Wikipedia, intl-spectrum, nineelms, pick911. All people that know how to
set a good search reference to ensure high ranked hits. Perhaps somebody
would like to pass on hints in this regard.
One disaster, Maverick which has bad links to SQL related topics instead of
the claimed pick multi-value open source project which has presumably
failed.
Peter McMurray
Of course I only looked at the first half dozen :-)

[Ross Ferris]

On Nov 2, 7:14 am, Tony Gravagno
<address.is.in.po...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote:
<snip>

>
> And Ross, it was RSTS on PDP-11, which we also called "ristus".

Thanks. I played with the "extended" version RSTS/E, but it was RDOS
on the DG platform that I really worked
>
><snip>

> Looking forward to TL Conference next week...

You mean "this week" ... starts Wednesday ... pocket watch & rabbit
optional .... large hat for disguise ... ESSENTIAL!
>
> T

[Ross Ferris]

On Nov 2, 12:00 pm, "Peter McMurray" <excalibu...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> "Tony Gravagno" <address.is.in.po...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote in
> messagenews:44pre5194t1uq10he...@4ax.com...

Peter,

I think maverick is still kicking along (sort of), but all development
in recent years has been done by one man .... and he is a TASwegian,
so that may explain some things ;-)

[eppick77]

I got my start on DEC PDP-11 running RSTE/E with BASIC PLUS and also
worked on the DG Nova using RDOS and Business Basic III.

Gee that seems like so long ago!

Eugene

[eppick77]

On Nov 1, 3:14 pm, Tony Gravagno

Tony,

In 1979 I was offered 2 jobs. One was going to be working with
networks for Woolco/Woolworth and the other was on a computer that I
had never heard of, with maintenance coming out of Cincinnati.

Oh yea, it was called a Microdata <G>

Eugene

[dzigray]

> Eugene- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Well now there's some F L A S H -backing timewarps...

First fondly back to the ol' SJSU days... '76-'77 timeframe --
spending way too much time on a RSTS-11 & RSTS/E (when the first
choice, being the CDC PLATO, wasn't available) burning the midnight
oil and implementing multi-user games while hacking (as academically
necessary) to maintain the required system privileges against growing
egotistical fifedomes, aka admins. [Un]fortunately, RSTS had two
tremendous vulnerabilities: (1) A critical bug in DEC's equivalent of
an X-ON/X-OFF flow control to their terminals (ie. flow-control states
that were "toggled" with <control>-O characters. If you jammed too
many ^O-s in a sequence, the I/O stream to the terminal would simply
get lost and start dumping system memory to the terminals -- so when
the data started to look like "streams of passwords", you simply had
to flip the printer switch on... (2) Creating any large file for
random access would never initialize it's space, so you would inherit
everything from virtual memory. A quick parse for a [1,1], [1,2],
[1,4],[10,10]... system accounts, would typically net you a system-
level account & password. If not, heck, delete the file and repeat.

Second, RE: SNOBOL -- Pick's FLASH development was led by Lon
Cherryholmes -- one the industry's foremost compiler GURU's, IMHO. He
absolutely loved Prolog and Snobol4, and used these to create the some
120,000-automated test cases for validating the Lex/YACC outputs
dynamically against the existing BASIC compiler. I still have the
Snobol4 book he forced me to buy. ('sigh.... also, one or two still
on loan, sorry Lon!)

Dave Z.

[Tony Gravagno]

eppick77 wrote:
>In 1979 I was offered 2 jobs. One was going to be working with
>networks for Woolco/Woolworth and the other was on a computer that I
>had never heard of, with maintenance coming out of Cincinnati.
>
>Oh yea, it was called a Microdata <G>
>Eugene

(Reference to Matrix) I call that a "red pill / blue pill" moment, and
often think about how our lives could be totally different had we
simply picked "the other one".

[Tony Gravagno]

dzigray wrote:
>First fondly back to the ol' SJSU days... '76-'77 timeframe --
>spending way too much time on a RSTS-11 & RSTS/E (when the first
>choice, being the CDC PLATO, wasn't available) burning the midnight
>oil and implementing multi-user games while hacking (as academically
>necessary) to maintain the required system privileges against growing
>egotistical fifedomes, aka admins.

Holy cow, Dave, another Pickie who knows PLATO? I was an author using
the Tutor language, and site admin on that network. When people say
the internet was created in the early 90's I look back fondly to the
late 70's when we were exchanging emails, talking in forums, playing
games with people around the world (Empire, Oubliette). Good times...
That system was so much fun to work on, I'd take a train from one site
to another in the middle of the night just to get some online time.

In fact I was tutoring students on that system and one day one of them
said "my husband has a computer department and they're looking for an
operator, interested?" And that's how I came to work in my first Pick
shop.

T

[Peter McMurray]

"dzigray" <goo...@bridge2.com> wrote in message
news:6149226a-df9b-4961...@s21g2000prm.googlegroups.com...

On Nov 2, 1:42 pm, eppick77 <eppic...@yahoo.com> wrote:

<snip>.

[Un]fortunately, RSTS had two
tremendous vulnerabilities: (1) A critical bug in DEC's equivalent of
an X-ON/X-OFF flow control to their terminals (ie. flow-control states
that were "toggled" with <control>-O characters. If you jammed too
many ^O-s in a sequence, the I/O stream to the terminal would simply
get lost and start dumping system memory to the terminals -- so when
the data started to look like "streams of passwords", you simply had
to flip the printer switch on... (2) Creating any large file for
random access would never initialize it's space, so you would inherit
everything from virtual memory. A quick parse for a [1,1], [1,2],
[1,4],[10,10]... system accounts, would typically net you a system-
level account & password. If not, heck, delete the file and repeat.

<snip>
Dave Z.

Sounds much more complicated than the Reality. Long time ago but as I
remember it one just had to hit break as you Logged in and bingo you dropped
into Sysprog where all was available :-)
Peter McMurray

[Ed Sheehan]

I worked for Microdata from 78 till 81. I never saw anyone able to jump into
sysprog from a login procedure, but if you had the old "switch panel" box,
there is a sequence you could enter on the front panel while at the login
prompt which would put you at sysprog's tcl. I learned it from an engineer
there. Fun stuff.

Ed

"Peter McMurray" <excal...@bigpond.com> wrote in message

news:0J0Im.51919$ze1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...