remembering back to a time when .....

[mrtigre]

I don't know how many who are currently reading this remember way before the inception of pc's when Mainframe computer ruled the earth? I worked at a company that allowed customers to share time on their computer. (hence time sharing).
The computer operators word ear plugs because of the intense noise that was produced by these computers that ran on vacuum tubes and massive
computer hardware that sometime took up more that one floor.  The entire computer was on raised flooring so that the cooling gel could correctly circulate through the computer  to keep the internal temp down. When the a/c went out we used to open the outside doors to try to keep the computer cooled off enough to operate correctly/.
the main storage devices worked pretty much like the pc diskdrives except that they were much larger. Often enough when something as small as a piece of dust got between tyhe disk head and the recording surface, it caused the head to crash into the recording surface witha sound simmilar to a speeding freight train slamming on the brakes.
the burning odor lasted in the computer room for hours after.  Tape drives were common i/o devices.
they were simmi;ar to a reel to reel tape recorder set up. whenone of those drives went into high speed rewind, it rewound 24oo ft in 30 seconds.
one day the operator didn't tighten up the hub to secure the tape to the drive and when the tape went into rewind it caught just enough of the hub ti fling the tape across the computer room.
well, why I finally wanted to say is that  although it wasn't funny at the time , on fridays we used to backup the entire computer system to tapes. (52 tapes). The following Monday when we tried to backup files to the system they were unreadable on the backup tape. it seemed that Saturday public service was in to check the service and the pu employee walked through the tape library wearing a magnet on his belt. it just so happenned that the 52 backup tapes were belt high and as he walked through he de-magnetized everyone of them. the user was (well you could immaging.
thanks for allowing me to shre this with you.

[mrtigre]

de-gauss, WOW! there's a word you don't hear anymore, (except in magnetic attractions)

[Ace]

Or not.  I have nothing to add.

The legend of Bloody Stupid Jester is that if you say his name 3 times, whom Shall Not Be Named, you will summon him to appear on your screen within the poast he has been mentioned.

Ace; uh huh.