Murphy is the son of the devil?
May. 28th, 2008 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paserbypBack In The Days of The 1971:
A small state had a central (shared) computer system. The Motor Vehicle system was the elephant sitting in the middle of the room.
The computer was and IBM 360/40 with:
256kb of core memory
That's kilo byte, not mega byte.
240mb of disk storage,
in an array of 40mb drives.
1gb 2321 Data Cell and
6 vacuum column tape drives.
124kb/sec read/write speed.
The 2321 was about the size of a washing machine tub. The storage was on 6x2 inch magnetic strips hanging in a circular array. The rental was $5,100/mo.
The system was backed up monthly. The backup was a 10 hr run. The transactions were written to journal tapes. When the system failed, it almost always did, it was restored from the previous month's backup, and the transactions applied from the journal tapes.
The back ups were started Friday evenings. The analyst pilot fish gets the call early Saturday morning, it's failed again. Roust the IBM Customer Engineer, (repair guy) out of bed, fixes it and the restore is started. 11:00 that evening, analyst gets call it's on the last tape. It's a nice Sunday evening and fish and operator are enjoying smokes out side. There is a brilliant flash and several seconds later a loud explosion. The power substation had blown up.
In horror and extreme dread, the fishes take a look at the 2321. Sure enough, the program had been running; It was restoring the VTOC, vol. table of contents, tape strip. The strip was a perfect according. 3 or 4 milliseconds later and it would have been a perfect run.
Since that that time the analyst has been a believer in the kingdom of Murphy, and Murphy sits on the left hand of god (or devil?).
Fish's boss bit the bullet and said the decision to bring all other processing to a halt and run it again was like the time he flew a glider across the Rine.
He knew they were coming down, hoping it wasn't into the trees.
For references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphys_law
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/datacell.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2321.html
http://members.optushome.com.au/intaretro/2321DCD.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_IBM_disk_storage
A small state had a central (shared) computer system. The Motor Vehicle system was the elephant sitting in the middle of the room.
The computer was and IBM 360/40 with:
256kb of core memory
That's kilo byte, not mega byte.
240mb of disk storage,
in an array of 40mb drives.
1gb 2321 Data Cell and
6 vacuum column tape drives.
124kb/sec read/write speed.
The 2321 was about the size of a washing machine tub. The storage was on 6x2 inch magnetic strips hanging in a circular array. The rental was $5,100/mo.
The system was backed up monthly. The backup was a 10 hr run. The transactions were written to journal tapes. When the system failed, it almost always did, it was restored from the previous month's backup, and the transactions applied from the journal tapes.
The back ups were started Friday evenings. The analyst pilot fish gets the call early Saturday morning, it's failed again. Roust the IBM Customer Engineer, (repair guy) out of bed, fixes it and the restore is started. 11:00 that evening, analyst gets call it's on the last tape. It's a nice Sunday evening and fish and operator are enjoying smokes out side. There is a brilliant flash and several seconds later a loud explosion. The power substation had blown up.
In horror and extreme dread, the fishes take a look at the 2321. Sure enough, the program had been running; It was restoring the VTOC, vol. table of contents, tape strip. The strip was a perfect according. 3 or 4 milliseconds later and it would have been a perfect run.
Since that that time the analyst has been a believer in the kingdom of Murphy, and Murphy sits on the left hand of god (or devil?).
Fish's boss bit the bullet and said the decision to bring all other processing to a halt and run it again was like the time he flew a glider across the Rine.
He knew they were coming down, hoping it wasn't into the trees.
For references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphys_law
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/datacell.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2321.html
http://members.optushome.com.au/intaretro/2321DCD.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_IBM_disk_storage
