Recent posts in the "Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)" thread have prompted a number of us to post about things that seem to have become ingrained in our minds from many decades ago.
Examples include weird stuff about IBM JCL, its syntax, and strange incantations that would simply baffle younger generations.
Since I have only just retired (http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=345114), I think such reminiscences will pop up in my mind more and more.
So, who can come up with (probably-)useless stuff from the Olden Days?
I'll start with saying I can still remember that IBM 3330 disk drives ("DASD") had a track-size of 13,030 bytes (it was not fixed-length 512 byte blocks as nowadays), which you needed to know in order to get the maximum usage for whichever datasets (files) you were creating (e.g. for card-image files, 12,960 was the optimal blocksize). The IBM 3330 had a capacity of 100 Mbytes. Similarly, the larger IBM 3350 had a track-size of 19,069 and a capacity of 317 Mbytes.
I remember my first programming in 1969/1970 - my school (Bo'ness Academy in Scotland) had a very good maths teacher who could foresee the future of computing and its importance. So we learned Fortran-IV and ALGOL 60WP in parallel. One of my first programs made use of the random number generator function in Fortran to simulate a roulette wheel, and fellow classmates would place small bets on various numbers/colours/odd-even things. We'd fill out programming forms, and these would be sent off to the University of Edinburgh, where they'd be transferred onto 80-column punched cards. The program would then run on an IBM System/360 Model 50WP, and any syntax errors were costly (turnaround time was ca 1 week !)
Alas, that's when I discovered that the "random" number generator would generate the same numbers if given the same seed value ... the first run of the program was to make sure it worked, the second run of the same program was the real-deal with the small bets placed. I had to return everyone's money :o
Examples include weird stuff about IBM JCL, its syntax, and strange incantations that would simply baffle younger generations.
Since I have only just retired (http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=345114), I think such reminiscences will pop up in my mind more and more.
So, who can come up with (probably-)useless stuff from the Olden Days?
I'll start with saying I can still remember that IBM 3330 disk drives ("DASD") had a track-size of 13,030 bytes (it was not fixed-length 512 byte blocks as nowadays), which you needed to know in order to get the maximum usage for whichever datasets (files) you were creating (e.g. for card-image files, 12,960 was the optimal blocksize). The IBM 3330 had a capacity of 100 Mbytes. Similarly, the larger IBM 3350 had a track-size of 19,069 and a capacity of 317 Mbytes.
I remember my first programming in 1969/1970 - my school (Bo'ness Academy in Scotland) had a very good maths teacher who could foresee the future of computing and its importance. So we learned Fortran-IV and ALGOL 60WP in parallel. One of my first programs made use of the random number generator function in Fortran to simulate a roulette wheel, and fellow classmates would place small bets on various numbers/colours/odd-even things. We'd fill out programming forms, and these would be sent off to the University of Edinburgh, where they'd be transferred onto 80-column punched cards. The program would then run on an IBM System/360 Model 50WP, and any syntax errors were costly (turnaround time was ca 1 week !)
Alas, that's when I discovered that the "random" number generator would generate the same numbers if given the same seed value ... the first run of the program was to make sure it worked, the second run of the same program was the real-deal with the small bets placed. I had to return everyone's money :o
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/38s2yjb
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