RE: Re; QUSRTOOL (was IP PRINTING) -- MIDRANGE-L

Neil:

Did you ever have a user that loved paperclips and those little red or green or blue or yellow plastic tabs to make individual cards easy to find? Did you ever run a card deck through a 2540 with a paperclip or color tab on a small group of cards?

The users didn't mind if we took off the tabs - so long as we put them back. Yeah, right. One morning, the users didn't understand why their reports weren't done. For the past few weeks, we had been having a running battle about the tabs and paperclips. We had asked that they remove the clips and tabs. They had agreed. On this particular day, they had decided that "removing the clips" meant that they would move them from the top of the deck to the bottom of the deck. This was a 3-drawer set and we didn't look at the bottom of each handful. The reports weren't done because the paperclips had torn a bunch of read brushes out of the 2540 and we had to make an emergency CE callout to get it fixed. It took four hours to repair the card reader and that was a large part of our night window.

One place that I worked, we burned damp treebark to make steam that we used to spin turbines for power. Our pulp mill was a net power producer.

Early in my career, my job was to manage the paper used by the computer operation. I was the person that carried cards to the keypunch people, I carried cards and green-bar paper to machine operators, decollated the carbon paper out of the reports and bound them for distribution, and maintained the warehouse of paper products.

Richard Jackson
mailto:richardjackson@richardjackson.net
http://www.richardjacksonltd.com
Voice: 1 (303) 808-8058
Fax: 1 (303) 663-4325

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com [mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of neilp@dpslink.com
Sent: Monday, October 23, 2000 4:57 PM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Re; QUSRTOOL (was IP PRINTING)

Yes - we had to keep records because of the large inventory files on all the computer cards we were consuming.
Also, during the fossil fuel crisis in the 70's we would generate elecricity to power the computer by burning the card chips punched out of the 80 column cards. When IBM introduced the 96 column cardw with the little tiny round holes/chips, we could no longer generate enough electricity to pay for the cost of the off duty fireman hired as a precation to stand between the burning card chips and the computer with a fire hose (this was the first generation "firewall") so the practice was eventually phased out.

Neil Palmer DPS Data Processing Services Canada Ltd.
50 Acadia Avenue, Ste.102 AS/400~~~~~
Markham, Ontario, Canada. ____________ ___ ~
Phone:(905) 474-4890 x303 |OOOOOOOOOO| ________ o|__||=
Cell.:(416) 565-1682 x303 |__________|_|______|_|______)
Fax: (905) 474-4898 oo oo oo oo OOOo=o\
mailto:NeilP@DPSlink.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.DPSlink.com iSeries 400 The Ultimate Business Server

Pat Barber <mboceanside@worldnet.att.net>
Sent by: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
2000/10/23 10:14
Please respond to MIDRANGE-L

To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
cc:
Subject: Re: Re; QUSRTOOL (was IP PRINTING)

Neil Palmer wrote: > > OK - sorry, maybe my definition of "very old stuff" and your > definition differ a little. I guess my definition is influenced by > age (I'm not saying, but I have been working on Rochester "midrange" > products since 1972). Gosh Neil, that was way back before electricity. I assume this means you are much older than previously believed. According to the younger list members, computers during the Jurasic period(70's) used fossil fuel and actually consumed paper products(cards)....... Did people actually keep records back then ????