4 ms·

Story time. My first job out of college, working on the port of VMS from VAX to Alpha AXP. This was before it was renamed OpenVMS (Posix team in Italy!) and whe

by colinb 3y ago

Story time. My first job out of college, working on the port of VMS from VAX to Alpha AXP. This was before it was renamed OpenVMS (Posix team in Italy!) and when Alpha was still a codename (possible alternates for final choice of product name included VAX-2000, and MondoVAX (still my favourite)). I was assigned to port the Bad Block Detector (BADBLK? I don't remember exactly) to the 64 bit architecture. The 'port' turned out to be change the build files to use the correct compiler and flags. I don't remember if the tool was written in PL/1, Bliss or VAX assembler, but we had compilers (yes, even for VAX 32 bit assembler) for all of them. The interesting part was the testing. A Bad Block Detector is a piece of software that watches for disk blocks going bad, and remaps them to spare capacity (your spinning rust disk is lying about its size - don't know if this is true for SSDs). It might even try to copy data from the failing blocks to the remapped space if there's time. More modern h/w does this in the firmware on the drive. It's transparent to the OS. Testing this behaviour is... challenging. Recipe: Test the Bad Block Detector Serves: millions Time: A couple of hour elapsed Ingredients: - a VAXstation - i.e. a biggish desktop machine that can run Alpha emulation well enough for our purposes. All of its disks are connected on a SCSI bus. - a 3.5inch floppy drive with a SCSI connection (yes, you read that right) - a box of 3.5 inch disks - a paperclip Method: Boot emulated environment. Set cross compiled Bad Block Detector running. It watches for 'interesting' disk related events. Insert floppy disk. Note the Bad Block Detector does nothing (because disk has no bad blocks.) Take paperclip in right hand. Take fresh disk in left hand. With pinky finger, push back the sliding cover that protects the delicate rusty surface. Using paperclip, gouge a few hundred kilobytes of damage into rusty surface. Replace good disk with scratched disk. Watch console for proof that Bad Block Detector woke up, spotted the badness, and remapped its little heart out. Serve to delighted and amazed customers. Loose billions of dollars, arrange purchase by Compaq, rinse, repeat.

actionfromafar 3y ago
In a not very big town in Northern Europe, I cycled past Digital Equipment offices on my way to school. They had such a huge work force all over the world, and sunk into the ocean almost without a trace.
- vaxman 3y ago
  You had to be the best of the Best to work for DEC —not a nerd-hipster (like the talented, but not trained or experienced techies at Apple and Microsoft). Apple and Microsoft were all over us trying to get us to quit DEC by falling for their limos and food courts (our CEO drove a Pinto and we wore suits because it neutralized people coming from different backgrounds as being equal, so we could truly work together regardless of our socioeconomic background, not because we were jerks like LSD-dropping Steve Jobs, who was off screwing Japanese investors out of $100 million in 1989s money with in his magnesium Cube at the time). A couple things happened to change it all, but the gist of it is that Dave Cutler finally cracked and defected to Microsoft (he’s the Ace of Aces behind all major DEC systems from 1970s forward and now behind NT and Azure) and the DEC boardroom was anxious about Intel having appropriated DEC’s revolutionary RISC processor tech that would go on to give us the last 35 years of the otherwise dead X86 tech that was cheaper because it was being sold in high volume by an army of PC clone makers. First the Board sold DEC’s Hudson division that made the groundbreaking Alpha and StrongARM chips to Intel (as a settlement), and then they sold DEC itself. There is a lot more to the story, but that’s pretty much the bottom line. What happened to the people? Cutler took many, when Google and Amazon became a thing, they tracked some or us down (including YouTube founders) and took some. The vast majority were sent to the benches (permanently). I heard a rumor that DEC’s then youngest senior level worker ever today hangs out on here sometimes and has a reputation of like 11 because truth sort of conflicts badly with all the crap that bloggers wrote for the current generation over the past 35 years. You see, those bloggers were maybe computer store (like shoe store) salesmen, but probably were just slightly smart school children when all of that reality was goin’ on. RIP Ken Olsen. FU Dave Cutler.
  - fs111 3y ago
    You seem bitter. Maybe you should grow out of this weird believe system that only hard-core techies are worth their salt or something. The world works different than you want, which seems to frustrate you greatly. Maybe accept it and be a bit happier?
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
zorked 3y ago
> don't know if this is true for SSDs It is, but it is handled in firmware now, just like in newer HDDs.

by colinb 3y ago

actionfromafar 3y ago

In a not very big town in Northern Europe, I cycled past Digital Equipment offices on my way to school. They had such a huge work force all over the world, and sunk into the ocean almost without a trace.

vaxman 3y ago
You had to be the best of the Best to work for DEC —not a nerd-hipster (like the talented, but not trained or experienced techies at Apple and Microsoft). Apple and Microsoft were all over us trying to get us to quit DEC by falling for their limos and food courts (our CEO drove a Pinto and we wore suits because it neutralized people coming from different backgrounds as being equal, so we could truly work together regardless of our socioeconomic background, not because we were jerks like LSD-dropping Steve Jobs, who was off screwing Japanese investors out of $100 million in 1989s money with in his magnesium Cube at the time). A couple things happened to change it all, but the gist of it is that Dave Cutler finally cracked and defected to Microsoft (he’s the Ace of Aces behind all major DEC systems from 1970s forward and now behind NT and Azure) and the DEC boardroom was anxious about Intel having appropriated DEC’s revolutionary RISC processor tech that would go on to give us the last 35 years of the otherwise dead X86 tech that was cheaper because it was being sold in high volume by an army of PC clone makers. First the Board sold DEC’s Hudson division that made the groundbreaking Alpha and StrongARM chips to Intel (as a settlement), and then they sold DEC itself. There is a lot more to the story, but that’s pretty much the bottom line. What happened to the people? Cutler took many, when Google and Amazon became a thing, they tracked some or us down (including YouTube founders) and took some. The vast majority were sent to the benches (permanently). I heard a rumor that DEC’s then youngest senior level worker ever today hangs out on here sometimes and has a reputation of like 11 because truth sort of conflicts badly with all the crap that bloggers wrote for the current generation over the past 35 years. You see, those bloggers were maybe computer store (like shoe store) salesmen, but probably were just slightly smart school children when all of that reality was goin’ on. RIP Ken Olsen. FU Dave Cutler.
- fs111 3y ago
  You seem bitter. Maybe you should grow out of this weird believe system that only hard-core techies are worth their salt or something. The world works different than you want, which seems to frustrate you greatly. Maybe accept it and be a bit happier?
  - actionfromafar 3y ago

zorked 3y ago

> don't know if this is true for SSDs It is, but it is handled in firmware now, just like in newer HDDs.