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From: Jeff Kell[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 1997 9:50 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] DDS-2 cleaning messages
<snip>
>The drive had creeped out of alignment, but thte only indication was
>trying to read it's tapes on another drive. We had the drive replaced
>today, but bear in mind that by "repairing" such drives means that you
>can no longer "read" tapes recently written on that drive, so beware.
This "situation" is what managed to get me my first DP job!
I was a senior in high school learning ALL ABOUT the HP2000
system we had access to (via 110 baud acoustic modems and
a LAB-10 Decwriter if member serves). The "terminal room" was
a closet (really!) with just enough room for the terminal and two
chairs. A friend and I did odd jobs for the math department and
gained enough favor with them to have the run of the closet :)
We would spend all of our free time poking around the system,
and printing off anything we could get a hold of. We had been
doing this for months (the system console wasn't watched
very closely or we would have been nabbed early on!).
Anyway, one day the CE did PM on this system and found the
800 bpi tape drive out of alignment (way out!). He dutifully
realigned the drive, but failed to make note of where it was
before he made his adjustments. Well, as luck would have
it, when the system was coming back up, it failed and needed
to be boot-loaded from papertape. For some reason that
currently escapes me, the data on the three massive 33MB
packs wasn't usable, and they had to resort to the backup
tapes. Which of course now they weren't readable! HP tried
all kinds of tricks, but never did get that data back.
Well, the head of the match department knew of the exploits
my friend and I had been going through (they didn't care, since
as we found new logons to the systems, we gave them a few
to use for their classes thus extending the monthly allotment
of time they could use the system! Computer time was very
previous back then), and heard about the loss of data from this
system. She somehow convinced us to risk life and limb and
speak to the Director of Computer Services about our collection
of listings (quite a few boxes full of paper by this time). After
a gentle chewing out about hacking, he offered us unlimited
access to the system if we would re-input what we had on paper.
We spent the last several months of high school typing away,
and the day after my graduation ceremonies I started my job
as a "Clerical Sub-grade II" (in title, in practice I was one of
two people responsible for the continuing health of three HP2000
systems, and a single HP3000 Series II).
Ahh the good 'ol days!
Regards,
Michael L Gueterman
Easy Does It Technologies
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.editcorp.com
voice: (888) 858-EDIT -or- (509) 943-5108
fax: (509) 946-1170
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