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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <6434@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Feb-86 15:00:08 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.6434
Posted: Tue Feb 25 15:00:08 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Feb-86 15:00:08 EST
References: <14700001@hplabsb.UUCP> <476@mmm.UUCP> <9345@ritcv.UUCP>, <1335@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 19

Semi-related:  a number of years ago, the IBM installation I was at had
some model or other of IBM line printer which had one interesting property:
the fast-formfeed mode of the printer was *very* fast.  It could go through
a box of paper very quickly indeed.  Putting the printer offline either
didn't help or didn't help quickly enough; I forget.  The only fix was to
put your foot in the paper box, which caused the paper to tear.

The operators on this system were renowned for their low intelligence and
general surliness.  So one diabolical programmer wrote a peculiar little
program which got run occasionally late at night, when the I/O clerk had
gone home and the operator was handling everything.  The program produced
a console message saying "quick, put your foot in the box!", waited a few
seconds, and then put the line printer into fast-formfeed mode.  The delay
was calculated so that if the operator, on seeing the message, leaped up
and dashed over to the printer AT ONCE, he could catch it before there was
paper all over the floor...
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry