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From: jackg@tekchips.UUCP (Jack Gjovaag)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <138@tekchips.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Mar-86 16:34:50 EST
Article-I.D.: tekchips.138
Posted: Mon Mar 17 16:34:50 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Mar-86 06:21:05 EST
References: <14700001@hplabsb.UUCP> <6466@utzoo.UUCP> <753@abic.UUCP> <875@kitty.UUCP>
Reply-To: jackg@tekchips.UUCP (Jack Gjovaag)
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 17

Speaking of 7094s, I once worked at an installation that had two of these.
The "console printer" on these computers was a large machiine that looked
(and maybe was) a 407 accounting machine.  The 7094 didn't have any
kind of internal clock but the 407 did and its patch panel was
wired up so every time a line was printed on it, the time was appended at
the right margin.  Thus elapsed time of a job could be determined by
looking at the time printed  when the $JOB card was printed and when
the EXIT message was printed.  Someone found out, however, that
the timer did not advance while printing was in progress, so the
times were a little inaccurate.  To get a free run on the computer,
all you had to do was keep the 407 continually busy and the timer
would never advance.  A program could issue a print to the printer
every so often (not very often due to the slowness of the printer)
and never be billed for a cent.  It did drive the operators crazy
though because everytime a line was printed on the 407, they went
over to look to see if it was telling them something significant to
the running of the job.