🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <110....@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us> fi...@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us (Bela Lubkin) writes:
>"TTA2:" (or whatever the modem was on).  Once, for the heck of it, I
>told it "DMA1:" -- the user-storage disk drive.  Then I told it to
>change the drive's baud rate.  Under VMS, this is accomplished by a QIO

When I worked at North Electric in the late 70's / early 80's, our support
division decided to upgrade our system with a new high-tech disk drive.
(I *think* it was made by STC, Storage Technology Corp.)  This thing not
only had the parallel data port for a typical (SMD?) controller, but also
had a serial RS232 port to which one could attach an ASCII terminal and
speak to the drive.  It not only had a monitor-type OS which allowed one
to write and hex-dump sectors, but you could code the thing in (a dialect
of?) PL/1 (although we never pursued that avenue).  It may have also had
a built-in file directory structure, too.  I'm sure I still have the glossy
around here somewhere; really an impressive Edsel of a peripheral...

Anyway, one of the things you could tell this disk drive was the time
(and date?).  One day, while futzing around, one of us (I honestly don't
remember if it was me) entered the command:

	TIME *

instead of the usual TIME 12:34 or whatever.  Immediately the sedate hum
of the spindle motor increased, and we began getting back some sort of
SERVO TRACKING ERROR indicating that the drive could no longer hold the
platter speed within the necessary tolerance.  Alas, even powering the
drive off and on didn't help any; we had to call the service rep (again)
to replace it...
-- 
{decuac.dec.com,cucstud,sundc}!c3pe!charles	ex::!echo Boo: