War story for the weekend

[Bob Eager]

Crashing the system by editing a file
-------------------------------------

This happened again on the ICL 4130 running KOS.

I was doing research on software portability, in which I had been
interested for some time. I had obtained a portable editor from a
postgraduate at the University of Essex, and had implemented it on KOS. It
worked in very limited memory (essential on KOS) but had advanced looping
and decision constructs which made it very powerful. A select group of
people (including me, of course) used it a lot.

KOS was simply a layer on top of the manufacturer's operating system; as
such, it had to deal with unexpected error returns from the system. I
general, these did not happen very much at all. For development purposes
(and KOS was being developed continually), any unexpected error would
cause KOS to stop scheduling its timeshared users, print the message
LOGICAL ERROR on the operator's console, and pause for operator input. A
simple command would allow it to continue, but of course the error had to
be investigated first.

My portable editor just occasionally caused a logical error. I tried my
best but could never find the fault. Then, one morning, I managed to cause
four logical errors within a few minutes. The system manager wasn't happy,
and he printed an octal dump of the entire KOS slave (we would call it a
virtual machine these days). This was on 11 inch by 8 inch paper, quite
thin, and a pile about a foot thick. He dumped it on my desk, with the
order "Fix it!"

I took the pile back to my college study bedroom, and left it on the floor
for several days. On the Saturday evening, I and several other postgrads
gathered in the college bar, and I had quite a lot to drink. At closing
time, I staggered back to my room, not at all sleepy. I assume I said to
myself, no doubt in a slurred voice: "Ah, fix the editor!"

Apparently, I did so. I have no more recollection of that night, but I
woke up the next morning to find paper all over the floor. On the top
sheet was written "Uninitialised variable in fourth word of VFILE control
block". And so it was.

[D]

Post by Bob Eager
Crashing the system by editing a file
-------------------------------------
This happened again on the ICL 4130 running KOS.
I was doing research on software portability, in which I had been
interested for some time. I had obtained a portable editor from a
postgraduate at the University of Essex, and had implemented it on KOS. It
worked in very limited memory (essential on KOS) but had advanced looping
and decision constructs which made it very powerful. A select group of
people (including me, of course) used it a lot.
KOS was simply a layer on top of the manufacturer's operating system; as
such, it had to deal with unexpected error returns from the system. I
general, these did not happen very much at all. For development purposes
(and KOS was being developed continually), any unexpected error would
cause KOS to stop scheduling its timeshared users, print the message
LOGICAL ERROR on the operator's console, and pause for operator input. A
simple command would allow it to continue, but of course the error had to
be investigated first.
My portable editor just occasionally caused a logical error. I tried my
best but could never find the fault. Then, one morning, I managed to cause
four logical errors within a few minutes. The system manager wasn't happy,
and he printed an octal dump of the entire KOS slave (we would call it a
virtual machine these days). This was on 11 inch by 8 inch paper, quite
thin, and a pile about a foot thick. He dumped it on my desk, with the
order "Fix it!"
I took the pile back to my college study bedroom, and left it on the floor
for several days. On the Saturday evening, I and several other postgrads
gathered in the college bar, and I had quite a lot to drink. At closing
time, I staggered back to my room, not at all sleepy. I assume I said to
myself, no doubt in a slurred voice: "Ah, fix the editor!"
Apparently, I did so. I have no more recollection of that night, but I
woke up the next morning to find paper all over the floor. On the top
sheet was written "Uninitialised variable in fourth word of VFILE control
block". And so it was.

Thank you for sharing! =)

I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that when
they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point where they
start to destroy more than they create. I always found that point a good
stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)

[Bob Eager]

Post by D

Post by Bob Eager
Crashing the system by editing a file
-------------------------------------
This happened again on the ICL 4130 running KOS.
I was doing research on software portability, in which I had been
interested for some time. I had obtained a portable editor from a
postgraduate at the University of Essex, and had implemented it on KOS.
It worked in very limited memory (essential on KOS) but had advanced
looping and decision constructs which made it very powerful. A select
group of people (including me, of course) used it a lot.
KOS was simply a layer on top of the manufacturer's operating system;
as such, it had to deal with unexpected error returns from the system.
I general, these did not happen very much at all. For development
purposes (and KOS was being developed continually), any unexpected
error would cause KOS to stop scheduling its timeshared users, print
the message LOGICAL ERROR on the operator's console, and pause for
operator input. A simple command would allow it to continue, but of
course the error had to be investigated first.
My portable editor just occasionally caused a logical error. I tried my
best but could never find the fault. Then, one morning, I managed to
cause four logical errors within a few minutes. The system manager
wasn't happy,
and he printed an octal dump of the entire KOS slave (we would call it
a virtual machine these days). This was on 11 inch by 8 inch paper,
quite thin, and a pile about a foot thick. He dumped it on my desk,
with the order "Fix it!"
I took the pile back to my college study bedroom, and left it on the
floor for several days. On the Saturday evening, I and several other
postgrads gathered in the college bar, and I had quite a lot to drink.
At closing time, I staggered back to my room, not at all sleepy. I
assume I said to myself, no doubt in a slurred voice: "Ah, fix the
editor!"
Apparently, I did so. I have no more recollection of that night, but I
woke up the next morning to find paper all over the floor. On the top
sheet was written "Uninitialised variable in fourth word of VFILE
control block". And so it was.

Thank you for sharing! =)
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that when
they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point where
they start to destroy more than they create. I always found that point a
good stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)

At that point, I had no judgement!

[songbird]

Bob Eager wrote:
...

Post by Bob Eager
At that point, I had no judgement!

i solved a lot of bugs the instant the door locked
behind me as i was leaving the lab. no way to get
back in until the next evening. it was great though
to be able to run the batch station overnight and to
have a terminal and printer to myself (and a few
others).


songbird

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by songbird
...

Post by Bob Eager
At that point, I had no judgement!

i solved a lot of bugs the instant the door locked
behind me as i was leaving the lab. no way to get
back in until the next evening. it was great though
to be able to run the batch station overnight and to
have a terminal and printer to myself (and a few
others).

Something like that happened to us just yesterday. It was
late in the day, and a cow orker was remoted into a customer's
machine. We were about to upload a different version of some
programs which we hoped would fix the problem, when the connection
went down. The customer's time zone was three hours ahead of us,
so there was no hope of getting back in.

[Charlie Gibbs]

<story snipped>

Post by D
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that when
they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point where they
start to destroy more than they create. I always found that point a good
stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)

I knew I had reached that point one night when I found myself staring at
a power switch with those O and | hieroglyphics, and seeing the | as a
pinched-off pipe that stopped electrons from flowing, and the O as an
open pipe through which power could freely flow.

That's the thing about hieroglyphics - they replace words that only
English speakers can understand with symbols that nobody can understand.
At least everyone is equal then...

[Niklas Karlsson]

Post by Charlie Gibbs
That's the thing about hieroglyphics - they replace words that only
English speakers can understand with symbols that nobody can understand.
At least everyone is equal then...

I mean, I guess... but I think there are still uses for the
"hieroglyphics". Take road signs in Europe; they are largely symbolic.
Putting them in text would be pretty impractical, as someone who drove
in from another country with a different language (and there are of
course _many_ of those in Europe) would likely not be able to understand
them.

There are some differences in the symbols from country to country, but
by and large they are standardized, and everyone learns them when
learning to drive.

Niklas

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by Niklas Karlsson

Post by Charlie Gibbs
That's the thing about hieroglyphics - they replace words that only
English speakers can understand with symbols that nobody can understand.
At least everyone is equal then...

I mean, I guess... but I think there are still uses for the
"hieroglyphics". Take road signs in Europe; they are largely symbolic.
Putting them in text would be pretty impractical, as someone who drove
in from another country with a different language (and there are of
course _many_ of those in Europe) would likely not be able to understand
them.

Some of them have enough intrinsic meaning that you can figure them
out from scratch, but many designers make the mistake of thinking
that _every_ symbol they come up with is intrinsically meaningful.

Consider the lawn mower I once saw. Its throttle was marked with
drawings of a rabbit and a turtle. How well would this go over in
a culture that didn't have the fable of the tortoise and the hare?

Post by Niklas Karlsson
There are some differences in the symbols from country to country,
but by and large they are standardized, and everyone learns them
when learning to drive.

I think the best thing is to treat these symbols as a separate
language that's distinct from any other. Everybody has to learn
it (which fortunately isn't difficult), and it remains constant
across all environments regardless of native language.

A hardware analog is the IEC 60320 connector on the power supply
of most modern computers (as well as many other appliances).
A computer manufacturer can build a device with a standard power
connector (typically C13) and sell it anywhere in the world. All
you need to power it is an appropriate cord (a.k.a. "appliance
coupler") which on one end has a C14 connector, and on the other
end whatever connector mates with the power outlets in use in
your particular country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60320

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Sat, 09 Mar 2024 17:39:19 GMT

Post by Charlie Gibbs
<story snipped>

Post by D
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that
when they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point
where they start to destroy more than they create. I always found that
point a good stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)

I knew I had reached that point one night when I found myself staring at
a power switch with those O and | hieroglyphics, and seeing the | as a
pinched-off pipe that stopped electrons from flowing, and the O as an
open pipe through which power could freely flow.

Nice.

Mine was a Monday morning that I should almost certainly have taken
off. I'd spent the entire weekend from Friday night to Monday morning at a
biker's party (at one point I'd driven somebody's Triumph through a bonfire
at his invitation) and was just a touch jaded while trying to pretend to
work. From somewhere an errant thought invaded my mind that all this
electronics and logic was just a smokescreen and really those little black
plastic packages contained (mostly) tamed daemons that sometimes just did
whatever they felt like.

The entire day was spent fighting bizarre bugs and failures in
things that had been working perfectly for months.

It was all due to fatigue etc. ... wasn't it ?

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot
On Sat, 09 Mar 2024 17:39:19 GMT

Post by Charlie Gibbs
<story snipped>

Post by D
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that
when they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point
where they start to destroy more than they create. I always found that
point a good stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)

I knew I had reached that point one night when I found myself staring at
a power switch with those O and | hieroglyphics, and seeing the | as a
pinched-off pipe that stopped electrons from flowing, and the O as an
open pipe through which power could freely flow.

Nice.
Mine was a Monday morning that I should almost certainly have taken
off. I'd spent the entire weekend from Friday night to Monday morning at a
biker's party (at one point I'd driven somebody's Triumph through a bonfire
at his invitation) and was just a touch jaded while trying to pretend to
work. From somewhere an errant thought invaded my mind that all this
electronics and logic was just a smokescreen and really those little black
plastic packages contained (mostly) tamed daemons that sometimes just did
whatever they felt like.

I like that one. And let me guess - they breathe magic smoke, which is why
a machine stops working when you let the smoke out. :-)

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot
The entire day was spent fighting bizarre bugs and failures in
things that had been working perfectly for months.
It was all due to fatigue etc. ... wasn't it ?

Yep, sometimes it's hard to know when to quit - especially when
you have a customer breathing down your neck. :-p

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Sun, 10 Mar 2024 18:16:24 GMT

Post by Charlie Gibbs
I like that one. And let me guess - they breathe magic smoke, which is
why a machine stops working when you let the smoke out. :-)

I didn't get to that. There's a demon by each pin in the chip, some
of them have a switch in their hands and are listening, the others have a
wire poked .. well you know ..., are sensitive and scream at different
pitches. The ones with switches pay attention to what chord is being
screamed.

The magic smoke is probably bongs, it's not good to let the demons
get too stoned which is why there shouldn't be enough to leak out.

The aftermath of biker parties tends to leave a 60s tinge.

[D]

Post by Charlie Gibbs
<story snipped>

Post by D
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that when
they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point where they
start to destroy more than they create. I always found that point a good
stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)

I knew I had reached that point one night when I found myself staring at
a power switch with those O and | hieroglyphics, and seeing the | as a
pinched-off pipe that stopped electrons from flowing, and the O as an
open pipe through which power could freely flow.
That's the thing about hieroglyphics - they replace words that only
English speakers can understand with symbols that nobody can understand.
At least everyone is equal then...

Amen! ;)

[Vir Campestris]

Post by Bob Eager
Apparently, I did so. I have no more recollection of that night, but I
woke up the next morning to find paper all over the floor. On the top
sheet was written "Uninitialised variable in fourth word of VFILE control
block". And so it was.

(yes, I know, I'm late)

You did it right. When I started work in the early 80s Friday lunchtime
was pub time. We'd discuss things between teams, come out with all sorts
of interesting ideas, and knew not to actually make any changes until
Monday.

_Some_ of the ideas were really good. Most were not.

Andy

[Andy Burns]

When I started work in the early 80s Friday lunchtime was pub time. We'd
discuss things between teams, come out with all sorts of interesting
ideas, and knew not to actually make any changes until Monday.

Mid 90s we got into a habit of drinking cider at Friday lunchtimes, but
we went back to the office and carried on, it lead to the nickname of
"scrumpy code" for any awful code found on a Monday that had to be
backed-out.