The Vent and Rant Thread

[cromag]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The first computer I used was an IBM mainframe at a bank. The first one I had at home was an AT&T 3B1, a single user Unix workstation. (I still have it.)
...

Not my first computer, but I had an AT&T 7300 -- basically a 3B1 with a smaller hard drive (10MB or 20MB). But I swapped out the hard drive for a 40MB half height hard drive, so I was in 3B1 territory. That one's gone, but I got a second one, un-upgraded, that's still in the garage.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I know this isn't the Joke thread, but since Hitch, Dennis, and others have been talking about programming and computers, I couldn't resist sharing this photo I saw today on Facebook.

OK--I literally LOL'ed. So did Mr. H, who keeps the Starship Hitch on the go.

I know that I shouldn't just make wild accusations, but I know that one of youse guys whammied me. I show up here this weekend, and after I curse about Win10, I stupidly, STUPIDLY say "our Win7 box is stable." Right? RIGHT.

In the last 36 hours, since I rolled out of bed, yesterday:

1. My $200, 6-month-old, Matias Keyboard--broke. Yes, broke. The keyswitch on the SPACEBAR, on the right-hand KB, broke. Want a real treat? Try typing without using your right thumb to create a space. BUT, I decide to troop though it, because...
2. Naturally, there was a TON of email, and I limped along typing half-assed. I swapped out keyboards for an older Logitech, which orients quite differently, and my wrists were aching by about 8:00 p.m. last night, at which point, I had to stop trying to catch up, because...
3. My 2.2Tb Raid...degraded. (I wonder if I can fit a crying emoty in here?). Rebuild time: slightly longer than it took Voyager to leave the solar system. I tell myself that "tomorrow will be a better day." (I'm SO full of it--I'm not an optimist by nature). And then...
4. Today? Today, I toddle into the office, boot up the Big Fella...and only 2 of the 3 monitors comes on, and those that do? Look like they have PIP--with the blue background for the desktops showing up, in the middle of the screen, with icons everywhere. THANKS, brand-new AMD card (that was supposed to solve the Win10 kerfuffle, and didn't.). More fixing...just in time for...
5. A thunderstorm shows up, and looooooooo---the power goes out. (We's in North Phoenix, folks, so..it's ONLY 102F under the cloudy skies...). The power company says, "hey, no worries, it's only about 4 hours until we'll get it fixed." In fairness, it was only a little over 2. I do have a UPS, for emergencies, that gives me some usage, and keeps the beacon on for 2+ hours...but still....
6. Power comes back on: and I have this client, that has requested a specific font for his chapter heads. Righty-o! As it happens, oddly enough, there are TWO fonts named "Requiem," with no real distinction, naming-wise, between them. Hmph. So, I pop open Suitcase Fusion, (yesterday), and using the ubiquitous, "The Quick Brown Fox..." text, I make preview copies of both Requiems, in PNG format, and I send them to the client. Practically resolved, right? So then,
7. Today, I get this email: "OH, thanks! It's fabulous that you have it! It's the one that says "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog."

It was at that point that I decided that sometimes, the Fates are YANKING on that string. Just plucking away at it, trying to see if you feel the vibrations. They are trying to tell you to leave the office, and try to BREATHE.

Ergo, being a big believer in not trying too hard to ignore the fates, I just said screw it. Because, sometimes, Fate wins.

Meanwhile...we are listening to something that someone else said, a person we respect, and we've already started the new build list. Setting out a rough budget, and rounding up the bits and pieces. Bugger all, man.

@WT: gotta tell you, we both laughed out loud when we saw your post. It's more appreciated than we can say. THAT laugh was sorely needed.

Hitch

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wodin

Unless of course he used the magnet out of a dead hard drive.

Not even then.

The magnets are the read/write heads on the drive. (How many there are will depend on the drive and the number of disk platters.) When the drive is powered up, they are energized and a magnetic field is created. But distance counts: the heads float on a cushion of air a few microns above the spinning disk platter. If the head actually touches the spinning platter surface, you get a head crash and an unusable drive. It's a reason why drives are assembled in clean rooms and hermetically sealed. The tolerances are so fine a colloidal particle of cigarette smoke might cause a crash. But there is no magnetic field when the drive is powered off, and that head has to be really close to the platter when it's on to change the pattern of magnetic bits on the surface.

(Back when I worked for the bank, I heard a story from a CDC Field Engineer who provided service on the big removable platter drives used in mainframes and minis.

An operator got a request to mount a disk pack on a drive. He got the appropriate pack from the shelf, powered down a drive, removed the existing pack and put in the new one, then spun up the drive and tried to read the pack. It didn't work.

He powered down the drive, removed that pack, and tried it on another drive. Still didn't work. He called his boss, and between them, they tried it in five other drives.

The result was head crashes on all seven drives, and $33,000 in repair bills to replace the damaged heads.

Given what I knew of the bank, I suspected the operator and his boss still had jobs when the dust settled... )
______
Dennis

[wodin]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The magnets are the read/write heads on the drive. (How many there are will depend on the drive and the number of disk platters.) When the drive is powered up, they are energized and a magnetic field is created. But distance counts: the heads float on a cushion of air a few microns above the spinning disk platter. If the head actually touches the spinning platter surface, you get a head crash and an unusable drive. It's a reason why drives are assembled in clean rooms and hermetically sealed. The tolerances are so fine a colloidal particle of cigarette smoke might cause a crash. But there is no magnetic field when the drive is powered off, and that head has to be really close to the platter when it's on to change the pattern of magnetic bits on the surface.

Uh...??? I'm looking at one right now that's attached to my file cabinet that I can't pry off with a screwdriver.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cromag

Not my first computer, but I had an AT&T 7300 -- basically a 3B1 with a smaller hard drive (10MB or 20MB). But I swapped out the hard drive for a 40MB half height hard drive, so I was in 3B1 territory. That one's gone, but I got a second one, un-upgraded, that's still in the garage.

The base model 7300 shipped with 1MB RAM and a 20MB drive, but I believe a 40MB drive was an option.

The 3B1 I got shipped with 2MB RAM and a 72MB drive. A client of the systems house I worked for had a 3B1 like that supporting a user on the console and four dumb terminals and a printer, running a specialized distribution management application. Performance was acceptable.

The drives were MFM drives, which pre-dated IDE. Performance was surprisingly good. Among other things, there was a compiler option you could set to compile code that could be paged directly off the drive for faster access. I had lots of fun figuring out how to get an 18.X version of Gnu Emacs to successfully compile that way. (The trick turned out to be in the order of the arguments to the ld command that linked the compiled object modules into an executable the system could run.)

Another friend was a big fan of them, and I believe he still has something like five working 7300s and 3B1s.

I was tickled by a machine that would boot and run AT&T Unix System V Release 2, a full multi-user, multitasking OS, and do useful work with adequate performance in one [b]megabyte[/i] of RAM. I added expansion cards to bring mine to 3.5MB RAM. It flew.

I looked at my 10mhz 3B1 running full multi-user, multitask Unix System V R2. Then I looked at my 33mhz 386 box with 8MB RAM struggling to run Windows for Workgroups 3.11, a multitasking shell on top of a single user, single tasking OS, gazed in the direction of Redmond, WA, and said "What are you doing?" I still say that.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wodin

Uh...??? I'm looking at one right now that's attached to my file cabinet that I can't pry off with a screwdriver.

And just what did you get it from?
______
Dennis

[Cinisajoy]

I have several magnets that are hard to move.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The base model 7300 shipped with 1MB RAM and a 20MB drive, but I believe a 40MB drive was an option.

The 3B1 I got shipped with 2MB RAM and a 72MB drive. A client of the systems house I worked for had a 3B1 like that supporting a user on teh console and four dumb terminals and a printer, running a specialized distribution management application. Performance was acceptable.

The drives were MFM drives, which pre-dated IDE. Performance was surprisingly good. Among other things, there was a compiler option you could set to compile code that could be paged directly off the drive for faster access. I had lots of fun figuring out how to get an 18.X version of Gnu Emacs to successfully compile that way. (The trick turned out to be in the order of the arguments to the ld command that linked the compiled object modules into an executable the system could run.)

Another friend was a big fan of them, and I believe he still has something like five working 7300s and 3B1s.

I was tickled by a machine that would boot and run AT&T Unix System V Release 2, a full multi-user, multitasking OS, and do useful work with adequate performance in one [b]megabyte[/i] of RAM. I added expansion cards to bring mine to 3.5MB RAM. It flew.

I looked at my 10mhz 3B1 running full multi-user, multitask Unix System V R2. Then I looked at my 33mhz 386 box with [b]8[/8]MB RAM struggling to run Windows for Workgroups 3.11, a multitasking shell on top of a single user, single tasking OS, gazed in the direction of Redmond, WA, and said "What are you doing?" I still say that.
______
Dennis

I hate to argue, but I was doing tech support for GBS (General Business Systems) right after the first divestiture, and the 7300 came with half height 10MB and 20MB hard drives and 512K or 1M RAM(an early base model had a 5MB drive, but it was useless and never released). The 3B1 came with a full height 40MB or 67MB drives and 1M RAM. There were a few odd variants that were being tested just before the line was discontinued, and you could run even larger capacity hard drives if you replaced the WD controller chip, but I'm sure those were the only models AT&T sold.

Documentation is sparse on the web these days, but I did find this:

http://www.oldcomputers.net/att-unix-pc.html

Note that the image they include is a 3B1, with the monitor pedestal to accommodate a full height drive.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

In actual fact, I suspect the disk would still work. It tends to take a more powerful magnetic field to scramble one than the sort produced by a refrigerator magnet, especially since the magnet is over the center of the diskette where there won't be any data stored to scramble.

Still a bad idea, but not necessarily deadly...
______
Dennis

I don't agree, there will be dataloss for sure. Way back I used to trade Sierre adventures with some of my friends (I know, I know) and after a fresh copy run I biked home. I safely put the disks on my luggage carrier at the back of my bike under some suspenders. As it was dark, I had the lights on. Not the battery fed LED light versions, but the old version with a dynamo. When I came home, the disks were useless. The small magnetic field from the wire underneath the luggage carrier due to the small power stream through it to feed the light was enough to destroy the disks... I guess the distance between the disks and the wire was about 10-15 cm. That was the last time I thought about safety first.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by Hitch

1. My $200, 6-month-old, Matias Keyboard--broke. Yes, broke. The keyswitch on the SPACEBAR, on the right-hand KB, broke. Want a real treat? Try typing without using your right thumb to create a space. BUT, I decide to troop though it, because...

No problem, I use my left hand all the time for that. I am left handed after all. I work the 7-finger typing system...

Originally Posted by Hitch

1. A thunderstorm shows up, and looooooooo---the power goes out. (We's in North Phoenix, folks, so..it's ONLY 102F under the cloudy skies...). The power company says, "hey, no worries, it's only about 4 hours until we'll get it fixed." In fairness, it was only a little over 2. I do have a UPS, for emergencies, that gives me some usage, and keeps the beacon on for 2+ hours...but still....

That is good thinking. If these things can happen, an UPS is a good investment. Now if only Internet would use an UPS... I actually once put in a request at the company I worked for to install an UPS for the coffee machines. If those break down during a powerfailure at an office, it is a bigger issue.

Originally Posted by Hitch

1. Today, I get this email: "OH, thanks! It's fabulous that you have it! It's the one that says "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog."

[/LIST]

Thanks, that makes my morning!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Not even then.

The magnets are the read/write heads on the drive.

No - in modern hard drives, there are very strong permanent magnets above and below the arm, which work with the coil in the arm to move the heads across the disc(s).

[wodin]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And just what did you get it from?
______
Dennis

A dead hard drive, They really do have quite strong permanent magnets in them.

Actually I have two of them, from two different dead hard drives.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cromag

I hate to argue, but I was doing tech support for GBS (General Business Systems) right after the first divestiture, and the 7300 came with half height 10MB and 20MB hard drives and 512K or 1M RAM(an early base model had a 5MB drive, but it was useless and never released). The 3B1 came with a full height 40MB or 67MB drives and 1M RAM. There were a few odd variants that were being tested just before the line was discontinued, and you could run even larger capacity hard drives if you replaced the WD controller chip, but I'm sure those were the only models AT&T sold.

Your memory may be better than mine. (Feel free to argue. I can be wrong, and would rather folks get the right information.)

I'm a little startled art the 512K RAM model, though I can believe a 10MB HD. The ones my employer sold began with the 20MB HDs. (We were a B2B outfit, and had some notion of the minimum HW our clients would need.)

I had a 7300 with 1MB RAM in two 512KB cards. It was an office machine and unused. I grabbed one 512KB card and swapped it into another machine that could use it. The 512KB RAM model technically booted and ran, but was snail slow. The company I worked for got acquired and relocated, and I declined to go along. My successor didn't understand why the office 7300 was so slow. (I took pity on him and explained the circumstances.)

Yes, I think you're right. The base 3B1 had 1MB RAM and 40 or 67 MB drive. I got an extra MB of RAM and the 67MB drive on mine, and added an additional 1.5MB RAM on expansion cards.

I encountered an outfit online selling optional larger HDs later on. Vague memory was that you had to replace the controller chip as well as the drive. Doing that was a challenge for mere mortals. The 7300/3B1 design looked neat, but was a royal pain to service. Getting it open was a challenge. Getting it closed back up again was a greater one. And the motherboard was on the bottom of the housing, so if you needed to get to it you had to get other stuff out of the way first.

IIRC, There was also a never produced follow on model intended as a low end server that had a color monitor and various other improvements. It would have been neat. The chap I mentioned upthread with five or so 7300s/3B1 was trying to get his hands on the new OS for it, but never could.

Documentation is sparse on the web these days, but I did find this:

Note that the image they include is a 3B1, with the monitor pedestal to accommodate a full height drive.

Someone back when said it looked like a Triumph TR7, which I thought an appropriate descriptor.

It was a pity AT&T never figured out how to sell systems. They positioned the UNIX-PC against the IBM-PC running DOS as an alternative single user machine, but didn't realize it was all about the software. There was an addon card with an 8086 CPU and 512KB RAM that could be used to boot DOS and run DOS applications as a guest process under Unix. Another fond memory was teaching folks how to break Lotus 1,2,3 copy protection so they could actually run it on a UNIX-PC with an 8086 expansion card.

Another bit I'll have to try to get off of my 3B1 at some point was a freeware package developed by AT&T folks to serve as training wheels for DOS users dealing with Unix. It was an extensive set of Korn shell scripts, functions, and aliases to let you use DOS commands like dir on the command line and have them recognized and return something useful, by converting them on the fly to the corresponding Unix commands. It was a very neat bit of shell scripting.
______
Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I have several magnets that are hard to move.

I have a chicken magnet. The store sent me the wrong package... that was *not* what I ordered. This one attracts the wrong kind of birds.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I have a chicken magnet. The store sent me the wrong package... that was *not* what I ordered. This one attracts the wrong kind of birds.

Oh, you had wanted the chick magnet?