I read a different version of this story many years ago, but have not been able to find it again. In it, the machine did not send measurements to a more distant

I read a different version of this story many years ago, but have not been able to find it again. In it, the machine did not send measurements to a more distant location, it recorded them in memory: core memory, with each core individually labelled, in case the machine didn't stay in one piece. (If true, this probably implies the machine was not a QBUS PDP-11, and the reflectometer was not an ethernet card.)