🚀 go-pugleaf

On 5 Feb 2018 15:01:16 GMT, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote:
>Questor wrote:
>> On 31 Jan 2018 13:30:57 GMT, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote:
>>>William Pechter wrote:
>>>> In article <5a70a45d...@news.dslextreme.com>,
>>>> Questor <usenet@only.tnx> wrote:
>>>>>On 28 Jan 2018 16:22:29 GMT, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote:
>>>>>>William Pechter wrote:
>>>>>>> I screwed up a customers RT11 sysgen at the Evans area back around
>1985-6.
>>>>>>> Never, never try to gen in multiterminal support and and the LS
>>>>>serial printer
>>>>>>> interface at the same address/vector.  Duh.  Nice crashes.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I did the sysgen as a favor (on my PDT 11/150 at home or on the
>>>>>>> later 11/23)
>>>>>>> and brought the software in to the customer.  Bad move... kernel
>crashed on
>>>>>>> terminal powerup on the 2nd port.  DEC might've canned my butt if they
>>>>>>> knew I did that for the customer... Officially, hardware guys shouldn't
>>>>>>> do sysgens 8-) but it seemed like fun at the time.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Getting canned for that seems very strange to me.  The -10 side wouldn't
>>>>>>have cared.
>>>>>
>>>>>They certainly would have.  I can't imagine any of the Field Service
>personnel
>>>>>I've known who would have done an unauthorized MONGEN for a PDP-10
>customer.
>>>>
>>>> Not officially... if they wanted to keep their job.
>>>> This was an 11/34 with one user running RT11 and a VT11...
>>>
>>><snip>
>>>
>>>Until the customer knew the configuration of his system, he could not
>>>do a MONGEN.  A field service rep would have helped him out.
>>
>> You have it backwards.
>>
>> A PDP-10 customer doesn't need Field Service to tell them what the
>configuration
>> is.  The PDP-10 customer tells Field Service what the configuration will be.
>>
>
>Another datum showing how you don't know how the PDP-10 product line worked.

As always, your standard response when you're wrong and don't want to admit it.

Since you've only worked in the development bubble, you clearly have no clue how
commercial PDP-10 shops worked.  Your statements about Field Service are
nonsense.

Field Service works at the direction of the customer.  Field Service does not
direct the customer.

Were the prices to be viewed in today's dollars, purchasing and operating a
PDP-10 would still involve serious coin, and even more so forty years ago.  With
such an expensive asset, PDP-10 owners certainly knew the configuration of their
machines down to the DECtape.  (At least the ones that were checked into the
tape library.)

Even the owners of multiple PDP-10s didn't regularly swap hardware around
between machines.  Doing so was expensive and served no purpose.  In order to
maximize return on those systems, the watchwords were reliability and stability.

When infrequent configuration changes were made, *everyone* involved was
informed:   the operations staff, the software support people, and the Field
Service representative.  Everyone knew in advance what was to be done, when it
was to be done, what to do after it was done, and what to do if it failed to get
done.  Users were notified about scheduled downtime and any changes they might
expect to see.  Of course, if a new monitor was required to accommodate the
changes, it was generated in advance.

BTW, one of TOPS-10's many flaws that TOPS-20 (yay!) eliminated was the need for
routine customer MONGENs, because it auto-configured most peripherals like
Massbus devices (tapes and disks).