Or a Lat/Long ;)
--
Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd.,
+61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda.
West Australia 6076
comp.os.vms,- The Older, Grumpier Slashdot
Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be.
The Sheraton is still a Sheraton - called "Sheraton Nashua" now.
VMS is in building 3, which is the leftmost.
Steve
>The SE buildings are NW of the Spit Brook Rd/Everet interchange?
Yes. If you're looking for it with an aerial image browser, the ZK
buildings are 3 connected rectangles sort of in a line, sort of behind the
hotel. VMS lives in the left/westernmost one.
> pr...@prep.synonet.com writes:
Thanks Steve. The Sheraton is the building with the 7-ish shape to the
east? And VMS is in the building with the 2 AC units on the roof, the
middle one having 6, and the eastern one 4 in an odd setup?
The Helipad still there?
> > Yes. If you're looking for it with an aerial image browser, the ZK
> > buildings are 3 connected rectangles sort of in a line, sort of
> > behind the hotel. VMS lives in the left/westernmost one.
Not far from the non-paged pool. :-)
42°42'49.13"N 71°27'31.21"W
> Thanks Steve. The Sheraton is the building with the 7-ish shape to the
> east? And VMS is in the building with the 2 AC units on the roof, the
> middle one having 6, and the eastern one 4 in an odd setup?
I'm not sure which "7-ish" building you refer to. The Sheraton is the
light-roofed building in the lower right of the Google image, right
next to the highway. Directly south (towards the bottom of the image)
of ZK3 is a slim, curved, 7-ish shaped structure that is the parking
garage for Oracle, whose building can be seen next to it. You have the
various Spit Brook buildings identified correctly - the eastern one,
ZK2, is the one I am in (no HP people are left in ZK2.)
> The Helipad still there?
Yes, though there is no longer regular use of it.
I was sent a different aerial view URL which is even better,
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=r3k2tq91br5p&style=o&lvl=1&scene=1706810
In this one, ZK3, with VMS, is at the top, and you can see the "great
barcode wall" at the ZK1 entrance in the middle. (It's a popular VMS
trivia question to ask what this wall reads now, and what it read when
first erected.)
The Google photo must have been taken on a weekend, as the parking lots
are TOO empty.
Steve
Just out of curiosity, where? I could not see any marked Helipad and
I believe the FAA still requires them to be crearly marked.
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bi...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
> I was sent a different aerial view URL which is even better,
> http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=r3k2tq91br5p&style=o&lvl=1&scene=1706810
> In this one, ZK3, with VMS, is at the top, and you can see the "great
> barcode wall" at the ZK1 entrance in the middle. (It's a popular VMS
> trivia question to ask what this wall reads now, and what it read when
> first erected.)
When I was there in May 2005, the barcode still had two one-bit
errors (a one bit in one character was swapped with the zero bit
from another). Have they fixed it yet?
In particular, on the bottom row, the first character should
be an upper case "W" (hex 57). Instead, it is hex 17 (Escape).
Likewise, the seventh character is supposed to be an upper
case "D" (hex 44). Instead, it is hex 46 ("F").
Remember that they used 7-bit ASCII, not 8-bit, when you go
counting bits.
Alan
How long has ZK been the home of VMS engineering? And thanks for the
links to the views of the area.
Dave...
> How long has ZK been the home of VMS engineering? And thanks for the
> links to the views of the area.
August 1980 is when the first of VMS engineering moved in to the first
(lowest) floor of ZK1. For two years before that it had been in a
converted shopping center in Tewksbury, MA. I know that ZK2 opened in
1982, and languages moved there. I think ZK3 opened in 1986.
As for the helipad, it's the square in the middle of the image at
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=110+spit+brook+rd,+03062&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=18&ll=42.712712,-71.457752&spn=0.002523,0.005171&t=k
It does not seem to be specially marked, so perhaps it does not qualify
anymore. I have not seen any helicopters land there in many years.
There is still the little waiting shed with instructions about waiting
for the pilot to signal that you can approach.
Regarding the barcode, I was not aware that there was an error in it.
If there is, I doubt it has been fixed. I'll have to check that out.
Steve
>mor...@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) writes:
>> pr...@prep.synonet.com writes:
>>>The SE buildings are NW of the Spit Brook Rd/Everet interchange?
>> Yes. If you're looking for it with an aerial image browser, the ZK
>> buildings are 3 connected rectangles sort of in a line, sort of
>> behind the hotel. VMS lives in the left/westernmost one.
>Thanks Steve. The Sheraton is the building with the 7-ish shape to the
>east? And VMS is in the building with the 2 AC units on the roof, the
>middle one having 6, and the eastern one 4 in an odd setup?
You've identified the right building, although I don't think those are
air conditioning units on ZK3. The A/C cooling units are the 3 things
between ZK3 and the helipad. There is a large mechanical room in the
basement (numbered as the first level) of ZK3, I believe the actual A/C
compressors are in there.
>The Helipad still there?
Yes, the square south of ZK3.
Last I know of a helicopter at the site, it did not use the helipad. It
was a BIG flying crane type of thing that sat in one of the parking lots
for a couple of days, maybe 8 years ago or so. It was used to replace the
A/C units on one of the other buildings (ZK1 I think) the following
weekend. I've heard a rumor that President Bush used the helipad once when
he visited Nashua (probably for the NH primary) but don't know for sure.
Would you happen to have the exact latitude and longitude of the office
where VMS is secretely being ported to the 64 bit 8086 architecture ?
:-) :-) :-) :-)
Errr, Uhm, 0x17 is a 23 (decimal), which is NOT the escape character.
Escape is 27 decimal, or 0x1B.
Does anyone have a photo of the wall they'd care to share with us
geographically challenged trivia lovers???
Okay, all this talk about the barcode wall and ZK3 has gotten me feeling
nostalgic. Anyone got a copy of ZK??? Oops, just found it on the
hobbyist site...
http://www.openvmshobbyist.com/downloads.html
Cool! Something to do this afternoon while my son plays the PS2...
Aaron
--
"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without
evidence. Science is simply common sense at its best -- that is, rigidly
accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic." (Thomas
Henry Huxley)
> Errr, Uhm, 0x17 is a 23 (decimal), which is NOT the escape character.
> Escape is 27 decimal, or 0x1B.
You are, of course, right. I don't know what I was thinking
when I wrote that. I'll blame it on a brain fart. The hex
values are correct, though.
I mentioned the errors to several VMS developers when I was
there in 2005, and one of them gave me the e-mail address of
the facilities manager. I sent him a description of the
problem, but never got an answer.
Would anyone care to place a bet on whether or not it has
been fixed yet?
Would anyone care to place bets on whether or not it is fixed
before my next trip there in May?
If it is "fixed", would anyone care to bet on whether or not
they do it correctly? :-) All they have to do is swap the
two incorrect bars.
Alan
> pr...@prep.synonet.com wrote:
>> Thanks Steve. The Sheraton is the building with the 7-ish shape to the
>> east? And VMS is in the building with the 2 AC units on the roof, the
>> middle one having 6, and the eastern one 4 in an odd setup?
>
> I'm not sure which "7-ish" building you refer to. The Sheraton is
> the light-roofed building in the lower right of the Google image,
> right next to the highway. Directly south (towards the bottom of
> the image) of ZK3 is a slim, curved, 7-ish shaped structure that is
> the parking garage for Oracle, whose building can be seen next to
> it. You have the various Spit Brook buildings identified correctly
> - the eastern one, ZK2, is the one I am in (no HP people are left in
> ZK2.)
Got it now. Part of the problem is over 20 years since I was there,
plus my direction sence was WAY screwed up by first time in the North.
Must be end of winter, no colours, and the trees look pretty sparce as
well. I walked from the sheraton up the slope to ZK, and discovered
that 6-8" of leafe litter is not fun to walk through. Out here, 2" is
about the limit it gets to.
>> The Helipad still there?
> Yes, though there is no longer regular use of it.
Ah, found it now. I thought it was to the west of the building, outside
the end of old RSX offices.
> I was sent a different aerial view URL which is even better,
> http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=r3k2tq91br5p&style=o&lvl=1&scene=1706810
> In this one, ZK3, with VMS, is at the top, and you can see the "great
> barcode wall" at the ZK1 entrance in the middle. (It's a popular VMS
> trivia question to ask what this wall reads now, and what it read when
> first erected.)
> The Google photo must have been taken on a weekend, as the parking
> lots are TOO empty.
Say that again, though there are quite a few in the Sheraton's, so weekend
it is. Still seems a lot emptier than it used to be on weekends though.
Or it was taken recently, now that the VMS engineering group has been
severely downsized ......
NOpe. Weekend wins. None of the Google photos are recent. For evidence
of this go look at areas devestated by hurricanes the last couple of years.
Or any place you know there has been construction in the last several
years.
>In article <4544392E...@teksavvy.com>,
> JF Mezei <jfmezei...@teksavvy.com> writes:
>>> > The Google photo must have been taken on a weekend, as the parking
>>> > lots are TOO empty.
>>
>> Or it was taken recently, now that the VMS engineering group has been
>> severely downsized ......
>NOpe. Weekend wins. None of the Google photos are recent. For evidence
>of this go look at areas devestated by hurricanes the last couple of years.
>Or any place you know there has been construction in the last several
>years.
Google doesn't have their own photos, of course. They use a variety of
sources, depending on what's available for a given area. For Spit Brook,
they used photos from April 2001 from the Massachusetts Geographic
Information System. (yes, I know full well ZKO isn't in Massachusetts,
but it's close enough to the state line Mass. data covers it, and there
is no other source with that resolution)
I don't know where the live.com "Bird's Eye" views came from. I can
tell you the different directions were shot at different times, since
the view from one direction shows the ZK3 parking lots empty, from another
direction they're full.
Does anyone kwow what happened to the Microsoft Terraserver which ran on
Alphas ? Could that database have been sold to people such as Google ?
There are also private companies that operate commercial spy satellites.
(for instance, after the tsunami, it was one of those companies that
published before and after images of the devastated areas), as well as
the katrina in the USA.
>Michael Moroney wrote:
>> Google doesn't have their own photos, of course. They use a variety of
>> sources, depending on what's available for a given area.
>Does anyone kwow what happened to the Microsoft Terraserver which ran on
>Alphas ? Could that database have been sold to people such as Google ?
Online at http://terraserver.microsoft.com/.
Again, the photos aren't theirs. They are from the U.S. Geological
Survey, although Terraserver is probably the only place to have all of the
USGS black-and-white photos (just about the whole US) in a computer
database.
The black-and-white ones Terraserver uses are rather old, mostly from the
mid-90s. The USGS also has just about the whole US on color-infrared
photos, although I know of no site that has all of them online, other than
these photos are used on other photo site pages if nothing better is
available.
> When I was there in May 2005, the barcode still had two one-bit
> errors (a one bit in one character was swapped with the zero bit
> from another). Have they fixed it yet?
>
> In particular, on the bottom row, the first character should
> be an upper case "W" (hex 57). Instead, it is hex 17 (Escape).
> Likewise, the seventh character is supposed to be an upper
> case "D" (hex 44). Instead, it is hex 46 ("F").
I believe they are still broken but I don't that entrance often.
--
John Reagan
HP Pascal/{A|I}MACRO/COBOL for OpenVMS Project Leader
Hewlett-Packard Company
Steve
Steve
>So, in my ignorance, what should the barcode wall say?
It originally read:
DIGITALSOFTWA
REENGINEERING
but some VP found out (I think it was Compaq by then)
and he had it changed to some mealymouth slogan
which is, if I remember right: "Customers Win When We Deliver"
or something equally inane.
It is *supposed* to say:
Customers Win
WhenWeDeliver
(Note the clever lack of spaces in the bottom row to make
the two rows the same length.)
What it *actually* (as of June, 2005) says (in 7-bit ASCII) is:
Customers Win
.henWeFeliver
(The "." in the second row represents the unprintable
hex 17 character.)
I think this means that whatever is "Felivered" will
have bugs in it. :-)
I am told that an earlier incarnation of the bar code
said something like "Software Engineering", but I never
saw that one.
Could someone at ZKO please inspect the bar code and report
the colors of the first seven bars in the bottom row?
Alan
> I don't know where the live.com "Bird's Eye" views came from. I can
> tell you the different directions were shot at different times, since
> the view from one direction shows the ZK3 parking lots empty, from another
> direction they're full.
No, it is because the cloaking device was only working in
certain directions at that time. :-)
Alan
terraserver.microsoft.com still works. It is sponsored by USGS.
uptime.netscaft.com claims it is running IIS on Windows Server 2003,
but doesn't know what hardware that's on.
> It is *supposed* to say:
>
> Customers Win
> WhenWeDeliver
>
> (Note the clever lack of spaces in the bottom row to make
> Could someone at ZKO please inspect the bar code and report
> the colors of the first seven bars in the bottom row?
I have uploaded a picture of the bar code to
http://static.flickr.com/115/285862825_50175029ca_o.jpg
The first character on the bottom row is indeed incorrect at hex 17.
Furthermore, the character that should be D in Deliver I decode as F.
The colors of that one are:
black, white, white, white, black, black, white. Black is 1, white is
0, and it's 7-bit ASCII, so that is 01000110, hex 46 or 'F'. Am I
misreading this?
I did not verify the upper row.
Steve
>> It is *supposed* to say:
>>
>> Customers Win
>> WhenWeDeliver
> I have uploaded a picture of the bar code to
> http://static.flickr.com/115/285862825_50175029ca_o.jpg
Yup, they have not fixed it yet! (And it looks like a
nice Fall day in Nashua.)
> The first character on the bottom row is indeed incorrect at hex 17.
> Furthermore, the character that should be D in Deliver I decode as F.
> The colors of that one are:
> black, white, white, white, black, black, white. Black is 1, white is
> 0, and it's 7-bit ASCII, so that is 01000110, hex 46 or 'F'. Am I
> misreading this?
No, you read the incorrect code correctly. :-)
Thanks for verifying that nobody has bothered to fix this bug.
If it were not for the fact that the 1 and 0 bits are different
shapes, it would be trivial to repaint them. As it is, they
need to unbolt the two bars from the wall and swap them.
I will check it again in seven months and report.
> I did not verify the upper row.
It appears to be OK.
Perhaps this should be added to the trivia question about the bar code. :-)
Alan
> Thanks for verifying that nobody has bothered to fix this bug.
> If it were not for the fact that the 1 and 0 bits are different
> shapes, it would be trivial to repaint them. As it is, they
> need to unbolt the two bars from the wall and swap them.
Ah, yes. Swapping one bar between the two wrong characters would fix
it. The first bar (white) in the erstwhile W should be swapped with
the sixth bar (black) in the erstwhile D.
I suspect this happened a few (10?) years ago when the bars were taken
down for some construction work and put back (incorrectly.)
And yes, it is a fine fall day here in Nashua, as was yesterday - both
a bit unseasonably warm (mid-60s.) The warmth will go away as of
tomorrow.
By the way, there used to be a time capsule buried in the walkway in
front of the wall, containing various artifacts from the DEC of 1982
(or thereabouts). I had contributed a copy of "CPU Wars" to it.
Sadly, it was later discovered that the cannister was improperly
sealed, water had filled it, and the contents destroyed.
Steve
I also thought to remember the helipad further to the west than it appears
on the Google pictures. Is it possible that it was moved to the current
position since the early nineties?
Hans.
> I also thought to remember the helipad further to the west than it appears
> on the Google pictures. Is it possible that it was moved to the current
> position since the early nineties?
Nope - it's right where it always was. The faint line through the trees
from the east is a walkway, and the connector between building 1
(center) and building 3 (west) is, on the third floor, seating area for
the cafeteria, and we can see the helipad from there. I used the
helicopter back in the days DEC was flying it.
There has been no construction at all at the site since building 3
opened in 1986.
Steve
"Hans Bachner" <Ha...@Bachner.priv.at> wrote in message
news:eiliu...@usenet.bachner.priv.at...
I think that you are thinking of the old Merrimack MKO facility. It had
a helicopter land in it's Pond once.
I also seem to recall that Basingstoke (blazingSmoke) in the UK, once
had a VAX being manhandled down the stairs, go through a plate glass
window and into the pond there...
q
>There has been no construction at all at the site since building 3
>opened in 1986.
Wasn't the cafeteria expanded sometime after ZKO3 was built?
>
>I think that you are thinking of the old Merrimack MKO facility. It had
>a helicopter land in it's Pond once.
Mister Q is correct. I watched the pond landing from the MK
cafeteria. I don't recall the date but it must have been somewhere
around 1978.
John Sauter (J_Sa...@Empire.Net)
No - actually, it was contracted to create some additional office space
(and the recreation room dubbed the "ZKO Holodeck".
Steve
Ah, another old-time RTL-er heard from... Hi, John!
I think the helicopter incident (which I believe had Stan Olsen on
board) was in 1979.
Steve
>Ah, another old-time RTL-er heard from... Hi, John!
>
Hi Steve! For the newcomers to this board, Steve
was the second person recruited into the VMS RTL
group, after Tom Hastings. I was the third.
John Sauter (J_Sa...@Empire.Net)