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From: kumard@sunybcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: More 1130/1403 stuff
Message-ID: <2319@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 12-Feb-87 11:07:54 EST
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.2319
Posted: Thu Feb 12 11:07:54 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Feb-87 22:09:49 EST
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 71
Keywords: BITS Pilani, India


	I am surprised no one volunteered to tell our-side of the
	1130 story. My undergrad school in India (Birla Institute
	of Technology & Science (BITS),Pilani) has had an 1130
	since 1972. It has a 1403 printer. For a long long time
	(about 8 years!) it was the backbone of the CS Department
	and the School. All Academic computing (like student records)
	time-table scheduling, and student services were handled by
	this giant (The scholl has about 2500 students). 

	I am greatful that it was my first machine. Simply because
	we were able to play with it as we liked. Here's a few
	stories (some of them were legends told to me by alumni):

	1. One wonderd what would happen if you forced read a card
	   with a giant hole punched in it. It was tried and the
	   card reader jammed.

	2. One used to sneak into the computer room at night to play
	   with it. However, the operators kept a log of system usage
	   by recording the meter-readings on all devices.
	   A technique for resetting the meters back was figured out.
	   After a night of hacking, they were reset. authorities
	   used to wonder why the electricity bills were so high.

	3. On one those nights, someone decided to write his own
	   Operating System, to fool the operator. It was planted
	   on the disk for the operator to load in the morning. He
	   switches the machine, shoves in the Cold-start card, and
	   the printer says,
	   1403: I feel sick today, put me off
	   (keeps printing this repeatedly)
	   (Operator thinks something is wrong, goes to switch it off)
	   1403: Oh! No, you can't put me off!
	   (Operator starts to put the printer off-line)
	   1403: No, don't even try!
	   ........and so one this kind of stuff went on until the
	   operator got sick of it (after several power off, retries)
	   and called in the services of the Chief of the Computer
	   Center, who immediately know what had happened. Luckily
	   he had a good sense of humor.

	4. Someone got hold of this FORTRAN program that printed a lot
	   of garbage for a minute. The sounds the printer made were
	   the exact notes of the Indian National Anthem! After the
	   third run, the printer chain gave up. The program deck was
	   confiscated by the Chief.

	5. With every such machine, the Chief also gets a reputation.
	   This Chief had a reputation for tinkering with the machine.
	   Once, he spent the whole day pullingthe 1403 apart, and by
	   evening it was all over the room. There was a power cut
	   (power cuts were normal there), everyone went out for a
	   coffee. Chief lit a candle in the room and started fiddling.
	   Power came back after 2 hours. The floor was clean and the
	   1403 stood in one piece with chief standing next to it.
	   Asks thge operator to switch power on, and it worked.

	6. The same chief installed a VLSI Floating Point Unit,
	   lodged it in the Multiplexer housing, and incorporated
	   it in the FORTRAN compiler in a 27-th pass (it already
	   had 26 passes).

	And there's tons more of that stuff!!!

	Deepak.

-- 
CSNET  :  kumard@buffalo                                          |
ARPA   :  kumard%buffalo@csnet-relay                              |
BITNET :  kumard@sunybcs                                          |