Re: Assorted Soviet computer folklore

#4527

Author: DLV
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 1990 05:00

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Vadim G. Antonov said:
>The Soviet BESM-6 could adjust the secondary power supply voltage with
>software means! So one could alert surge protectors (and turn off the
>machine) by moving voltage up-down-up-down several times. /BESM-6 was in
>mass-production about 18 years! An unique occasion, isn't it?/
>...
>       Yet another funny story about BESM-6:
>
>  |    Each BESM was equipped with a wooden hammer to
>  |    hit memory modules periodically!
>
>       (BESM stands for: Large Electronic Computing Machine,
>       mass production was started at 1967, ended at 1984,
>       1 MFLOPS (really!), constructed from germanium bipolar
>       transistors, 768 Kb of core memory, 48 bits a word).
>
>  |    On the BESM's control panel a speaker and volume knob
>  |    are located (First PC? ;-) Some hardware tests uses
>  |    this feature.

A good source of information about BESM-6 is _High-Speed Computers of the
Soviet Union_ by Peter Wolcott and Seymour Goodman, published in IEEE
Computer, Sept. '88. It also talks a lot about the El'brus. BESM-6 sounds
like a nice machine for one's basement. (I've seen PDP-11's for $100 at
computer fairs; one can wire new instructions in it and generally have fun;
alas I have no place to keep one.)

>The joke about rewinding fans resembles me one real case: I was mastering
>Unix-like system for East German ugly brain-damaged PDP-11 clone (K1630)
>and have found the non-DEC trap "FAN FAILURE" ! I did not invent any
>reasonable reaction on that trap. ;-)

Well, I've installed Microsoft LAN manager at a client, and we'll soon
upgrade it to version 2.0. The new version has support for an
uninterruptiple power supply that, in the event of a power failire, sends a
message to a network server (via a serial port; such beasts do exist), so
the server can shut down in an orderly manner within a few seconds. (Not
that I'm going to use this.) This is not a bad idea---under MS-DOS or OS/2
if you suddenly turn off your machine, you're likely to end up with orphan
disk clusters (which you can't easily fix under OS/2), and under some
versions of Unix the consequences can be far worse. :) So, putting a trap
for a power failure that will close files and shut everything down is a
reasonable thing to do, if it's a Unix box.

>Could anybody say me why (practically?) all German machines are equipped
>with power switch on a rear panel, so one have to seek for it for some
>minutes? ;-)

Perhaps, to discourage users from turning it off and on too often? This is
bad for the electronics inside. :) Or perhaps so that you don't press it
accidentally. I have a 17-months-old son, who used to like to press a red
button in front of my '386 system. (That's a "reset" button.)

I heard a rumor some years ago that the reason why IBM's PC had no reset
button (wired to the reset wire on the CPU), while most clones do, was that
Microsoft insisted that there be no switch, so that hacker types would have
more difficulty breaking copy protection. (You trace c.p. code, the machine
halts, you have to turn it off and on...)

>I can tell you the funny story about stupid users - they were unable to do
>anything when they saw the message "Hit any key". Problem was solved by
>marking space bar with bold "ANY".

Interestingly, we had a very similar case here at GC. We have a very dumb
secretary, and whenever software asked her to "press any key", she'd press
Shift, Control, or Alt, and then run to everyone complaining that the system
didn't work. Eventially everyone's become convinced that she's too dumb to
remember that 'any' key means the space bar, or use a computer in general,
which may have been her secret goal, since it reduced her workload. :)

Here's a related story. I used to have a pair of Soviet punch cards which
I inherited from my late mother (alas, I've misplaced them). They has the
Russian words "nachalo" and "konetz" punched in them in big Cyrillic letters
(as hole patterns). Whenever I teach a class where this is applicable, I ask
if anyone has used or at least seen punch cards or paper tape, and then
showed them the cards---someone would invariably ask about the strange hole
patterns, and I'd explain that these cards came from the old country.
This semester I teach operating systems, and no kids have seen punch cards
(can you believe it?? :), but one girl works for some new york city agency
where they still use paper tape.

Dimitri Vulis

Dumb programmers [Was Re: Assorted Soviet computer folklore]

#4528

Author: do... Dominic Dunlop
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 1990 09:48

24 lines
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In article <900917045...@lilac.berkeley.edu> (sorry, lost your
name) writes:
> We have a very dumb
> secretary, and whenever software asked her to "press any key", she'd press
> Shift, Control, or Alt, and then run to everyone complaining that the system
> didn't work. Eventially everyone's become convinced that she's too dumb to
> remember that 'any' key means the space bar, or use a computer in general,
> which may have been her secret goal, since it reduced her workload. :)

Little or no offence meant, but I think some of us have planks in our
eyes...

Hey, who are you accusing of stupidity?  ``Press any key'' means ``Press
ANY key''.  This person was quite right to complain that she'd been lied
to by programmers who should have known better, but who had allowed the
fact that they had a well-formed mental model of the way that computers
operate to prevent them from realising the large majority of the
population posesses no such model.

Dumb (or at least thoughtless) programmers, say I, not dumb users.
A smart programmer would have anticipated this problem, and ensured that
it didn't arise in the first place.
-- 
Dominic Dunlop

Re: Dumb programmers [Was Re: Assorted Soviet computer folklore]

#4525

Author: kl... Klaus Ole Kristiansen
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 1990 07:48

36 lines
2251 bytes

do...@tsa.co.uk (Dominic Dunlop) writes:

>In article <900917045...@lilac.berkeley.edu> (sorry, lost your
>name) writes:
>> We have a very dumb
>> secretary, and whenever software asked her to "press any key", she'd press
>> Shift, Control, or Alt, and then run to everyone complaining that the system
>> didn't work. Eventially everyone's become convinced that she's too dumb to
>> remember that 'any' key means the space bar, or use a computer in general,
>> which may have been her secret goal, since it reduced her workload. :)

>Little or no offence meant, but I think some of us have planks in our
>eyes...

>Hey, who are you accusing of stupidity?  ``Press any key'' means ``Press
>ANY key''.  This person was quite right to complain that she'd been lied
>to by programmers who should have known better, but who had allowed the
>fact that they had a well-formed mental model of the way that computers
>operate to prevent them from realising the large majority of the
>population posesses no such model.

>Dumb (or at least thoughtless) programmers, say I, not dumb users.
>A smart programmer would have anticipated this problem, and ensured that
>it didn't arise in the first place.
>-- 
>Dominic Dunlop

I am currently developping a program in turbopascal 5.5 on an
IBM pc. When a compilation is finished, the program shows
a message "success, press any key". If I hold down the
ALT key, the line of help at the bottom of the screen changes,
to show some of the ALT-key combination. The "press any key"
message does not go away! The program KNOWS that I have pressed a
key, but chooses to ignore it! 

Klaus Kristiansen

Re: Dumb programmers [Was Re: Assorted Soviet computer folklore]

#4530

Author: Bob Maccione
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 1990 23:06

24 lines
1649 bytes

Dominic says>
}>Hey, who are you accusing of stupidity?  ``Press any key'' means ``Press
}>ANY key''.  This person was quite right to complain that she'd been lied
}>to by programmers who should have known better, but who had allowed the
}>fact that they had a well-formed mental model of the way that computers
}>operate to prevent them from realising the large majority of the
}>population posesses no such model.
}
}>Dumb (or at least thoughtless) programmers, say I, not dumb users.
}>A smart programmer would have anticipated this problem, and ensured that
}>it didn't arise in the first place.
}>-- 
}>Dominic Dunlop
}

The problem is with the shift/control keys. On a project I wrote under
QNX that had to run on both the console and terminals I put in the
usual 'press any key'. However if I was running on the console I would
look for the alt/control/shift key and pop up a message saying something
like "try a different key!"...

ahhh, the good old days when you could do stuff like that  :-)

bob

🚀 go-pugleaf

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Re: Assorted Soviet computer folklore

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