× The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.



Two events, one conclusion.

In the mid 1980's I was going to programming school by day an acting as
the swing shift operator at an insurance company at night. The S/38 in
my swing job had developed a habit of going down in the middle of the
day for no apparent reason. This is a HUGE problem because it shuts the
whole business down and the average time to rebuild the database access
paths on that machine was 11-13 hours. After several months of this,
the organization is getting really frustrated, and is ready to rip the
S/38 out and replace it with... anything.

The IBM CE has been in multiple times and replaced every card and
component he can think of, but nothing seems to affect the problem. The
problem is so random that everyone is baffled. Any thought of blaming
it on the ops manager (who works days) are out the window because the
problem happens even when he is out of the computer room.

Meanwhile, at programming school, there is a big controversy about
operations students deleting the source code of programming students.
At this school programming students typed their code in at a keypunch
machine and the data was written to an 8" diskette. They then would
turn it over to operations students who had the responsibility to load
the data to the mainframe. On several (also random) occasions
programming students complained that their source code was missing or
corrupted when the operations students loaded it.

Finally the Ops instructor solved the riddle. He noticed that
operations students would sometimes place the telephone on top of the 8"
diskettes. If a phone call was received, the old big black telephone
would ring and emit enough of a magnetic discharge to scramble the data
on the diskette. The Operations instructor tested his theory several
times and conclusively proved the ringing phone is the cause of the
problem.

The afternoon this mystery was solved, I walked into the computer room
of my night job and see the same style big black telephone on top of the
S/38 between the Diskette magazines and the display panel. I mention to
my Ops manager that this was the cause of the data loss at school. He
assures me that the telephone could not possibly be the cause of the
S/38 outages. But he never put the phone there again, and the problem
never occurred again.

jte

--

John Earl, VP and Chief Technology Officer
PowerTech: 253-872-7788
Direct: 253-479-1408
Mobile: 206-669-3336
John.Earl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx




Email is an excellent way to communicate material that is not time
sensitive. If your communication is of a more urgent nature, please
call.

===========================
This email message and any attachments are intended only for the use of
the intended recipient named above and may contain information that is
privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any
dissemination, distribution, or copying is strictly prohibited. If you
received this email message in error, please immediately notify the
sender by replying to this email message or by telephone and delete the
message from your email system. Thank you.



As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

This thread ...

Follow-Ups:
Replies:

Follow On AppleNews
Return to Archive home page | Return to MIDRANGE.COM home page

This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].

Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.