paper tape

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2 total messages Started by sa... Staveren van Hans Fri, 16 Feb 1990 10:55

#1392

Author: sa... Staveren van Hans
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1990 10:55

22 lines
1506 bytes

I *am* getting old! This ASR33 paper tape stuff reminded me
of the following.

Way back, when running V6 using 110 baud Olivetti terminals with paper
tape reader and punch we once had the following accident occur.
One day the computer started crashing. Rebooting and crashing.
The symptoms were that all character input seemed to get lost.
We scratched our heads in vain but couldn't figure out what was wrong.

Then suddenly this student came in and complained that every time she
tried to read in her file from papertape the system crashed and that
she couldn't get her assignment done that way. That lead us onto the right
track.

Her papertape contained TAB characters. While reading it in the system
echoed all characters, but of course had to expand the tabs. No such
luxury as hardwired TAB's those days. But 110 baud input with TABS
cannot be displayed at 110 baud with the tabs expanded so the system
character queues filled up causing all typed input to be thrown away.

Nowadays of course all tty lines have highwater marks but you have to be
hit by such an accident before you think of that...

Re: paper tape

#1393

Author: wat... Strawberry Jammer
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1990 20:48

27 lines
1805 bytes

In article <54...@star.cs.vu.nl> sa...@cs.vu.nl (Staveren van Hans) writes:
{I *am* getting old! This ASR33 paper tape stuff reminded me
{of the following.

Me too!

{Nowadays of course all tty lines have highwater marks but you have to be
{hit by such an accident before you think of that...

We had a set of hardware testers which output LARGE reels of paper tape 
(the size they come in the box). We needed to read them into out Univac 1108,
but the only reader we could get was part of the 1040(?) reader/punch
atatched to a high speed channel.i

So far no problem, but the thing had NO reels or holders for the tape! We
ended up having someone hold the reel with a pencil (BOTH hands) then
someone else would press "START". It would take the entire reel in under
a minute producing a cloud of paper tape on the output side!

Of course if the tape broke you got to do it all again. :-(

After a while this became a standard assignment for new line workers, while
all the "old hands" stood and watched! Need I describe the effect on the nerves
of the "victim"?

           *Mike Waters    AA4MW/7  wat...@dover.sps.mot.com *
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.

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