Worked on a project in late 80s for an Italian bank. We implemented a SWIFT (financial) interface (on Stratus for reliability reasons). A few fun and games: -

Worked on a project in late 80s for an Italian bank. We implemented a SWIFT (financial) interface (on Stratus for reliability reasons). A few fun and games: - The Stratus supposedly had fault tolerant duplexing of boards - pull one out and the other keeps working. A famous demo where local consultant pulls out the only board which wasn't duplicated! - The machine room was also fire proofed with Halon gas (if I recall correctly), but due to security concerns the door was locked from inside by operators when present (luckily as programmers we weren't expected to work inside with doors locked!). Luckily also, it was my first exposure to "paired programming"/"paired operating" as in there were invariably 2 of them. - A couple of the operators became too interested in how to work things, and wrote a quite comprehensive manual. They were "moved on" within the bank, because for security, management only wanted "people who could follow instructions", not "who can think for themselves". - the whole headquarters building was in a guarded compound, where ultimate protection against "red brigade terrorists" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades) were the armed guards. We used to meet them in the ground floor cafe every mid-morning, with a revolver on their hip, while they drank an espresso with brandy chaser. Really inspired confidence that they would be there to protect us should the need arise!