On Thu, Apr 3, 2025 at 11:23 AM, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
My late lady was like that. When working at a call center in the area, she hit some key or combination of keys on the terminal she was using and not only took down the whole call center, but also the two other ones that William-Sonoma had running at the time. It took them a few hours to get things back up again.
My wife was taking a business management class that used
?DEC VT100 (or 101) dumb terminals and time shared an IBM "big metal" computer. Like your late lady, she pressed some key or combination and crashed the main frame.
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Crashing an IBM mainframe is an extremely big deal, you don't simply cycle the power, you call IBM, they send out service engineers who cast arcane spells and use a special key to launch IPL [Initial Program Load, boot to mere mortals].
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The crash log IDed the terminal and user and she was "questioned" [think enhanced interrogation without water boarding] by upper level IBM engineers. They were concerned because the military and by the statement "Cheyenne Mountain depends on these" suggested NORAD used them. She was honest, showed the the 'database' [a very primitive asset/inventory management program] she was running. They paid her several hundred dollars over the next few weekends to try and replicate the problem.
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I suspected it was something she was doing and something someone else was doing and a memory leak allowed data/instructions from one terminal to mix with those from another terminal.
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What's funny is she uses a PC with a CAD program for quilting and a computer controlled "sewing machine" with zero issues. And she's never caused a 2M HT to lock up.?
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