In article , DoN. Nichols says...

So they went to a terminal logged onto the training database,
and the co-worker went through a series of steps which were all agreed
to be normal things, and ended up at a (yet another*) menu. And asked
"Everything is normal up to this point, right?". "Yes." "O.K., now!"
and she reached out and depressed *one* key.

Ha. Her name was not "Germain" by any chance?

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

In article ,
jim rozen wrote:
In article , DoN. Nichols says...

So they went to a terminal logged onto the training database,
and the co-worker went through a series of steps which were all agreed
to be normal things, and ended up at a (yet another*) menu. And asked
"Everything is normal up to this point, right?". "Yes." "O.K., now!"
and she reached out and depressed *one* key.

Ha. Her name was not "Germain" by any chance?

Nope -- and she is no longer with us, unfortunately.

But it sounds as though you have a story behind that name.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article , DoN. Nichols says...

Ha. Her name was not "Germain" by any chance?

Nope -- and she is no longer with us, unfortunately.

But it sounds as though you have a story behind that name.

That was the one I've already related - where a sister
of a co-worker called up her brother here and said 'type
this in to VM' and he did so. And then "hey, the system
just crashed."

"I know - it's a *bug*. We just found it!"

She was some kind of systems programmer.

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

DoN. Nichols wrote:

Chuck wrote:
Dan Caster wrote:
Boy does this take me back. My first programming language was APL.

My first was hex in 1956. Yup. ALWAC 3E. Tube flip-flops, Ge diode
logic, rotating drum memory, Flex-writer with paper tape reader. Key in
bootstrap in binary with front panel switches, read code for high speed
paper tape reader from the flex. No assembler. Code hand arranged for
optimum reading (drum rotation, ya know).

First contact with APL was 1967 at U of Alberta. We were test site for
APL\360.

We had 3 IBM2741

That's the one. Special type ball for APL.

I also remember that we learned that if we sent and 5 ibeam 3e9 command
it would crash the whole ibm mainframe.

I'm surprised you had access to that. That was a privleged command.

Some of them still are not.

M$ anyone?

About ten years ago, before my wife
retired, she (and the agency for which she worked) were doing testing on
a rather complex database system which a contractor was trying to
provide them.

One day I was teaching in the hardware lab (we used it for both class
and lab) when there was a knock at the door. I answered it to find the
Dean's secratary there with tears streaming down her face. She was
holding a floppy disk and had a sad story. That afternoon was the big
budget meeting and the Dean's presentation had a problem. (It was
wordsomething, not M$Word, things hadn't deteriorated that much yet.)
They could print about half a dozen lines then it would stop. Checked
the backups - same story. Was there ANYTHING I could do? I stuck the
disk in the PC Junior (a good computer for its day) and looked at the
directory. The reported file length seemed reasonable for the document
but a TYPE command showed only a few lines. I read the file into APL
and looked at the file in hex then played a hunch. +/EOF=TEXT. Answer
was 2. You see, this clever word processor let you insert control codes
in your document by holding down the Ctrl key and typing a letter.
(The Ctrl key is right beside the shift key.) So,
TEXT{is}((TEXT{not-equal}EOF)/TEXT),EOF and write the file back to disk
and voila. I was the local hero in the Dean's office for a while.

Ted

Ted Edwards wrote:

DoN. Nichols wrote:


Chuck wrote:

Dan Caster wrote:
Boy does this take me back. My first programming language was APL.


My first was hex in 1956. Yup. ALWAC 3E. Tube flip-flops, Ge diode
logic, rotating drum memory, Flex-writer with paper tape reader. Key in
bootstrap in binary with front panel switches, read code for high speed
paper tape reader from the flex. No assembler. Code hand arranged for
optimum reading (drum rotation, ya know).

First contact with APL was 1967 at U of Alberta. We were test site for
APL\360.


We had 3 IBM2741


That's the one. Special type ball for APL.


I also remember that we learned that if we sent and 5 ibeam 3e9 command
it would crash the whole ibm mainframe.


I'm surprised you had access to that. That was a privleged command.


Some of them still are not.


M$ anyone?


About ten years ago, before my wife
retired, she (and the agency for which she worked) were doing testing on
a rather complex database system which a contractor was trying to
provide them.


One day I was teaching in the hardware lab (we used it for both class
and lab) when there was a knock at the door. I answered it to find the
Dean's secratary there with tears streaming down her face. She was
holding a floppy disk and had a sad story. That afternoon was the big
budget meeting and the Dean's presentation had a problem. (It was
wordsomething, not M$Word, things hadn't deteriorated that much yet.)
They could print about half a dozen lines then it would stop. Checked
the backups - same story. Was there ANYTHING I could do? I stuck the
disk in the PC Junior (a good computer for its day) and looked at the
directory. The reported file length seemed reasonable for the document
but a TYPE command showed only a few lines. I read the file into APL
and looked at the file in hex then played a hunch. +/EOF=TEXT. Answer
was 2. You see, this clever word processor let you insert control codes
in your document by holding down the Ctrl key and typing a letter.
(The Ctrl key is right beside the shift key.) So,
TEXT{is}((TEXT{not-equal}EOF)/TEXT),EOF and write the file back to disk
and voila. I was the local hero in the Dean's office for a while.

Ted

I remember stumbling into that also - but I want to say I saw it years after
on a DG computer. Had several 'high' level editors to look and see the whoops.
Martin

--
Martin Eastburn, Barbara Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Ok - how about ICOSOHEX :-)

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn wrote:

Ted Edwards wrote:

DoN. Nichols wrote:


Chuck wrote:

Dan Caster wrote:
Boy does this take me back. My first programming language was APL.



My first was hex in 1956. Yup. ALWAC 3E. Tube flip-flops, Ge diode
logic, rotating drum memory, Flex-writer with paper tape reader. Key in
bootstrap in binary with front panel switches, read code for high speed
paper tape reader from the flex. No assembler. Code hand arranged for
optimum reading (drum rotation, ya know).

First contact with APL was 1967 at U of Alberta. We were test site for
APL\360.


We had 3 IBM2741



That's the one. Special type ball for APL.


I also remember that we learned that if we sent and 5 ibeam 3e9 command
it would crash the whole ibm mainframe.



I'm surprised you had access to that. That was a privleged command.


Some of them still are not.



M$ anyone?


About ten years ago, before my wife
retired, she (and the agency for which she worked) were doing testing on
a rather complex database system which a contractor was trying to
provide them.



One day I was teaching in the hardware lab (we used it for both class
and lab) when there was a knock at the door. I answered it to find the
Dean's secratary there with tears streaming down her face. She was
holding a floppy disk and had a sad story. That afternoon was the big
budget meeting and the Dean's presentation had a problem. (It was
wordsomething, not M$Word, things hadn't deteriorated that much
yet.) They could print about half a dozen lines then it would stop.
Checked
the backups - same story. Was there ANYTHING I could do? I stuck the
disk in the PC Junior (a good computer for its day) and looked at the
directory. The reported file length seemed reasonable for the document
but a TYPE command showed only a few lines. I read the file into APL
and looked at the file in hex then played a hunch. +/EOF=TEXT. Answer
was 2. You see, this clever word processor let you insert control codes
in your document by holding down the Ctrl key and typing a letter.
(The Ctrl key is right beside the shift key.) So,
TEXT{is}((TEXT{not-equal}EOF)/TEXT),EOF and write the file back to disk
and voila. I was the local hero in the Dean's office for a while.

Ted

I remember stumbling into that also - but I want to say I saw it years
after
on a DG computer. Had several 'high' level editors to look and see the
whoops.
Martin



--
Martin Eastburn, Barbara Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Ted Edwards wrote in message ...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

Chuck wrote:
Dan Caster wrote:
Boy does this take me back. My first programming language was APL.

Somehow the attribution got off a little. My first programming
occured before there was APL.

Dan

In article ,
Dan Caster wrote:
Ted Edwards wrote in message ...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

Chuck wrote:
Dan Caster wrote:
Boy does this take me back. My first programming language was APL.

Somehow the attribution got off a little. My first programming
occured before there was APL.

I don't remember when APL got started, but I think that I was
programming before it existed, too. At least the HP 9200B programmable
desktop (before that shrunk that into a pocket calculator), and perhaps
even my early fumbling at 6800 machine language. :-)

Without bothering to trace the thread back, I would say that it
looks as though it was Chuck who said that. He had apparently quoted
something of yours. Note that the attribution line should be one level
of quoting back from the actual quoted text, and here the two are at the
same level.

Of course, some newsreaders just don't bother to put in an
attribution header, and some others don't bother maintaining the quote
marks, so none of the above may be true. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---