On 2020-04-17 09:12, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 4/17/2020 12:19 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote:
On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:00:17PM +0000, Tapley, Mark B. via cctalk
wrote:
[...]
Tomasz, forgive me but I have to ask. You did note the date on which
that announcement appeared, right?
Yeah. I do not have to look at it again to tell you it was dated April
1st 2005 :-). But it is ok you asked, I could have overlooked it in a
hurry. But, well, Arduinos with 512 bytes or ram, just think of it,
putting Cobol on it, what an achievement would it be...
But Cobol is just not the same with out some spinning tape drives.
Ben.
Talking of spinning tape drives : anyone remember IBM's TAPESORT ?
On the 1401 a disksort was almost useless, bearing in mind that the 1311
diskdrive only could accomodate 2 million characters.
One night, the job was to sort the wages for a large numers of factory
workers. The job used to take 3-4 hours, so the operator went home for a
quick nap, intending to return at 4 in the morning, so he could finish
the job. However, the tape sort had aborted as there was a hard error on
one of the sort tapes, so he had to start from scratch.
The factory workers' union had a clause in the agreement, saying that if
the wages were not paid by 10 am, those who had not received the wages,
would strike until they had.
The result of that nights sleep was therefore that as soon as some 25
envelopes had been printed, they would be taken off the printer, filled
with notes and coins (we are speaking of the 1970's, they would be put
into a cab, speeded to the factory, and delivered to the workers. By 2
PM everybody was working again. The operator was not very popular, and
he never went home again to take a nap while "working"
/Nico
