3 ms·
So impressed with the progress. When I was a lad I spent 2 and a half days without sleep debugging an intermittent logic problem in an IBM 3033, a machine the
by abraae 10y ago
So impressed with the progress.
When I was a lad I spent 2 and a half days without sleep debugging an intermittent logic problem in an IBM 3033, a machine the size of a room with massive looms of trilead cables running between the frames. I remember the terror of having to do some bodgy fix like the one described when the guys file the notch out of the extender card, while an angry data processing manager a few decades my senior cursed and glowered behind me and the bank's check processing center stood idle. Perhaps the scariest experience of my life.
Hats off to anyone who fixes old computer hardware.
- digi_owl 10y agoSeems to me that these times its worse. With hardware you have a known good state to test against.
- abraae 10y agoI prefer software! With hardware you have to think about ringing circuits and intermittent faults that you eventually find are due to the cleaner bringing in a vacuum cleaner with bad motor brushes that injects electrical noise into the mains. Most software bugs are nothing compared to tracking down that sort of thing.
- jasoncchild 10y agoIt's not black magic; systematic troubleshooting is the key to either environment.
- nibnib 10y agoWith hardware you don't always have a reproducible known good state. Many changes aren't reversible. Certain tests can irreparably damage things.