Klarinet Archive - Posting 000832.txt from 1995/05

From: Bill Hall <billhall@-----.NET>
Subj: Re: More on Mouthpieces and reeds, reeds, reeds
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 07:07:06 -0400

>You are probably too young to know. In the good old days it was never,
>ever, ever, ever a hardware problem. Hardware crashes are a strictly modern
>phenom. IBM 705/704/707/7070/7080 never failed. Elliott/NCR803
>and a whole generation of machines circa 1960-65 were made to go forever,
>or, at least, until the next preventive maintenance session.
>-victor

I disagree. Mainframes did have hardware problems, even the 70x0's. I
started my career in computer science on an IBM 1620 (in 1968), which was
made during the same era as the 70x0's. It had problems far more ovten than
"never." Later I worked on an NCR Century 200. Its disk drives had a head
crash about twice a month.

I will agree, however, that we quickly learned to eliminate all other
possibilities before blaming a program problem on the hardware. This was
because 1) the hardware was very dependable (PC's are, too, if you don't buy
junk), and 2) the most likely cause of a program problem is the last change
you made to the software.

================================================
Hey, just because I _look_ dumb doesn't mean I'm _not_!
Bill Hall (billhall@-----.net) Dallas