Order of the Bath

I feel that this is an art that is rapidly disappearing.

In the old days (excuse me while I fetch my pipe and slippers) we could tell what a system or program was doing by watching Das Blinkenlights. You got to recognise certain patterns and, when the printer started, whether it was results or errors by the sound. Kind programmers deliberately created certain patterns to reassure the operators and other patterns to warn of errors or actions needed to be done, like loading a new tape. I can recall one programmer who used the speed of the hammers on a line printer to create tunes. I think it was the same chap who caused the twin round screens on the Cyber 74 to wink

Later when disk drives came along, you could tell what was running and if it was happy by listening to the head movement. I surprised myself yesterday by using the same technique to find bad spots on Mary’s laptop. Just by listening you could tell the head was repeatedly seeking and a chkdsk was needed. I wonder how long we will be able to do that as drives get quieter (and my hearing goes)?

This entry was posted on 19 Mar 2006 at 14:53 by Rick and is filed under Miscellaneous, Technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.