Jump to content

Scheduled downtime Monday Morning 8am-10am

Paul C

By Paul C
in Site Announcements

 Share

Featured Posts

Peter X Experienced

Peter X

Posted
Posted

It must be a long time since anyone needed to oil a computer, but some of the older equipment had moving parts, particularly the peripherals; card readers and sorters, disk and mag tape drives, printers etc. As a programmer, usually I didn't even load and unload these, because that was the operators' job, and I certainly didn't get involved in maintenance. Programmers only occasionally went into computer rooms. The company I worked for in 1978 had a card sorter which was about to become redundant, an impressively complex looking lump of machinery. I saw it in action once or twice, bits of metal moving back and forth everywhere. Some oiling must have been involved.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Loafer Veteran

Loafer

Posted
Posted

I distinctly remember Computer Science 101, learning to program a PDP-11 in Fortran. It would take a day to get your pile of punched cards necessary to find the square root of 97, or something, then go next door to run them through the card reader Machine, and another day to get the printout.

 

Or if you were really clever, you could use it to print a picture of Che Guevara on a 3-foot long printout.

 

Now look at us.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Phil Ambrose Veteran II

Phil Ambrose

Posted
Posted

It must be a long time since anyone needed to oil a computer, but some of the older equipment had moving parts, particularly the peripherals; card readers and sorters, disk and mag tape drives, printers etc. As a programmer, usually I didn't even load and unload these, because that was the operators' job, and I certainly didn't get involved in maintenance. Programmers only occasionally went into computer rooms. The company I worked for in 1978 had a card sorter which was about to become redundant, an impressively complex looking lump of machinery. I saw it in action once or twice, bits of metal moving back and forth everywhere. Some oiling must have been involved.

Yes back in the early days computers were pretty hefty bits of kit. I can remember in the early 60s as a young engineer we had to make the frames for Leo computers, these were made from 1" and 2" square steel tubing, guess this where the name main frame comes from.

Phil

Link to comment
Share on other sites
alan_fincher Veteran II

alan_fincher

Posted
Posted

The company I worked for in 1978 had a card sorter which was about to become redundant, an impressively complex looking lump of machinery. I saw it in action once or twice, bits of metal moving back and forth everywhere. Some oiling must have been involved.

 

When first programming I did actually manage to coax a card sorter that had lain unused for some years back into life. We were using decks of punched cards to input test data, and it was useful to have those cards in strict sequence so we could visually see what they contained, as we massaged the test data to deliberately create errors.

 

I only found out it was possible to get a mains shock from the card sorter by trying to adjust some settings without following an instruction to turn it off every time you did so. :o

 

All the early programming I did required you to code on coding pads, and the punch room then typed it up on to 80 column cards. Once that was done we would usually then punch our own cards when making amendments, but there were only a limited number of card punches for programmer use, and we were not allowed to hog them long enough to type up a whole program.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Scholar Gypsy Veteran

Scholar Gypsy

Posted
Posted

Yes back in the early days computers were pretty hefty bits of kit. I can remember in the early 60s as a young engineer we had to make the frames for Leo computers, these were made from 1" and 2" square steel tubing, guess this where the name main frame comes from.

Phil

 

I have a rather nice book on the history of LEO (Lyons Electronic Office, I think, as in Lyons Tea Shops), if you want to borrow it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Paul C Veteran II

Paul C

Posted
  • Author
Posted

 

For the curious/nosy, what have you done?

 

Richard

 

Basically the database was trashed from last week's full disk issue - the information_schema didn't reconcile with the underlying .MYD and .MYI files. Last Monday, we eventually got the database up and running reasonably well, albeit with a number of outstanding issues which meant certain admin tasks (such as merging members) couldn't be done. Also there was a chance that the weekly automatic repair/optimise had in fact further damaged it, preventing a backup. The longer it was left, the more data we'd lose. So the database was issue was resolved and stitched together this morning using a little bit from a backup we had by chance kept before xmas, but mostly all the important data kept without loss.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Mac of Cygnet Veteran II

Mac of CygnetDonate to Canal World

Posted
Posted

 

Basically the database was trashed from last week's full disk issue - the information_schema didn't reconcile with the underlying .MYD and .MYI files. Last Monday, we eventually got the database up and running reasonably well, albeit with a number of outstanding issues which meant certain admin tasks (such as merging members) couldn't be done. Also there was a chance that the weekly automatic repair/optimise had in fact further damaged it, preventing a backup. The longer it was left, the more data we'd lose. So the database was issue was resolved and stitched together this morning using a little bit from a backup we had by chance kept before xmas, but mostly all the important data kept without loss.

 

I put this into Google Translate, but it crashed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RLWP Veteran II

RLWP

Posted
Posted

The big drawer where they keep all the CWDF conversations got too full and broke, spilling stuff all over the floor and bits fell out of the folders. It was all stuffed back in a bigger drawer in a hurry but bits were missing. Fortunately there were copies left in the postbox, so Paul shut the door and did a bit of filing

 

Probably his nails

 

Richard

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tree monkey Veteran II

tree monkey

Posted
Posted

The big drawer where they keep all the CWDF conversations got too full and broke, spilling stuff all over the floor and bits fell out of the folders. It was all stuffed back in a bigger drawer in a hurry but bits were missing. Fortunately there were copies left in the postbox, so Paul shut the door and did a bit of filing

 

Probably his nails

 

Richard

Thank god someone understands this stuff ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.