4 ms·

I cut my teeth on a S/38 as an operator. I was the worst data entry person. I have dysgraphia, cannot touch type, and am a world class champion of bad spelling

I cut my teeth on a S/38 as an operator. I was the worst data entry person. I have dysgraphia, cannot touch type, and am a world class champion of bad spelling. Not a good combination for transcribing acuities from intraocular lens follow ups. My supervisor was on vacation and the manager needed a report for the FDA so, eager to help, I set about trying to convince paradox (a 4GL) to give me what was required. I got the report to print but the sorting was all wrong. It was in date order and not grouped by model. Finally, by looking through the in-line help system (1992, no googling), I figured it out and got the report to my manager. His reaction was not what I expected; he looked exceedingly perplexed. "Something wrong?" "It's grouped!", he replied. "Isn't that the way it should be?", I responded. He then proceeded to explain two things; he had been asking for the report this way for months, and I was going to be terminated that day. The best part was that, unbeknownst to me, they were shipping the S/38 from Virginia and needed an operator to work from 12 noon till 3 am and—instead of being fired—I was just about to be offered a new job!

fit2rule 11y ago
I don't get it - why did he fire you for doing what he wanted/needed for months?
- donut 11y ago
  Keep reading... ;-) and—instead of being fired—I was just about to be offered a new job!
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    Ah, he was going to be fired because he was a poor data-entry operator, but then re-hired because he was an awesome sysadmin. Got it. Makes more sense to me now .. and I'm pretty sure a lot of us who cut our teeth on that metal in the 70's and 80's experienced similar things. For my part, I was hired as a junior developer at a new company once, in my late teens, and told to "figure out how to programmatically reboot the workstations from a distance" .. took me 10 seconds with DEBUG.COM and I'd done a job nobody there already could figure out for weeks. An advantage of having nothing but DEBUG.COM to play with on my new PC for a while, I suppose .. ;)
    - pjc50 11y ago
      How did you do the "from a distance" part of the reboot? (I once had to rebuild a partition table by hand using nothing but DEBUG.COM and Peter Norton's book..)
      - fit2rule 11y ago
        Partition rebuilding .. heh, yup, been there too. I created "REBOOT.COM" and then had our master control application call it on command. The hardest part was working out how to programmatically reboot the PC - for some reason the mainframe guys couldn't work out that a simple "JMP FFFF" was all we needed. Scored points that day. :)
        batou 11y ago
        Great stuff. I miss the days when solutions could be that tight. You could have written that .com file with a hex editor back then. Now an ELF header and symbol table is bigger than edit.com
        fit2rule 11y ago
        Well, this was in the very early days of DOS, where it was being used as a front-end for other bigger systems, so it was considered not much better than a dumb terminal, albeit re-programmable so .. on these "workstations" that needed REBOOT.COM installed, we didn't even have DEBUG.COM - only the master control program (quite literally, a .BAT file), which didn't have a facility to put new apps on all the little DOS machines - admins had to do it manually. So we all got used to using COPY CON: C:\REBOOT.COM and some sort of Alt-key combo for "JMP FFFF", which defeats me since I haven't thought about it in 30 years or so .. but yeah. It was the last manual-install we did as an admin/dev team, as the reboot was needed so that we could finally add "Remotely administer Workstation Base Image" to the master control program/.BAT file and save ourselves endless late nights. ;)
        donut 11y ago
        Nice. I recall writing REBOOT.COM myself by using EDIT.COM and writing two bytes (0xCD 0x18 by typing Alt-205 Alt-24, if I recall right) and saving it. That executes interrupt 0x18 which should start the BASIC interpreter in the ROM. But most PCs didn't have one, so instead it rebooted. I discovered this by experimentation :-) http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/50/22.html http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/50/22.html
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  he wasnt being fired for incompetence, he was about to be laid off as a data entrist, presumably because the machine was moving. but by figuring out how to sort the damn output he got offered a sysadmin position.

fit2rule 11y ago

I don't get it - why did he fire you for doing what he wanted/needed for months?

donut 11y ago
Keep reading... ;-) and—instead of being fired—I was just about to be offered a new job!
- fit2rule 11y ago
  Ah, he was going to be fired because he was a poor data-entry operator, but then re-hired because he was an awesome sysadmin. Got it. Makes more sense to me now .. and I'm pretty sure a lot of us who cut our teeth on that metal in the 70's and 80's experienced similar things. For my part, I was hired as a junior developer at a new company once, in my late teens, and told to "figure out how to programmatically reboot the workstations from a distance" .. took me 10 seconds with DEBUG.COM and I'd done a job nobody there already could figure out for weeks. An advantage of having nothing but DEBUG.COM to play with on my new PC for a while, I suppose .. ;)
  - pjc50 11y ago
    How did you do the "from a distance" part of the reboot? (I once had to rebuild a partition table by hand using nothing but DEBUG.COM and Peter Norton's book..)
    - fit2rule 11y ago
      Partition rebuilding .. heh, yup, been there too. I created "REBOOT.COM" and then had our master control application call it on command. The hardest part was working out how to programmatically reboot the PC - for some reason the mainframe guys couldn't work out that a simple "JMP FFFF" was all we needed. Scored points that day. :)
      - batou 11y ago
        Great stuff. I miss the days when solutions could be that tight. You could have written that .com file with a hex editor back then. Now an ELF header and symbol table is bigger than edit.com
        fit2rule 11y ago
        Well, this was in the very early days of DOS, where it was being used as a front-end for other bigger systems, so it was considered not much better than a dumb terminal, albeit re-programmable so .. on these "workstations" that needed REBOOT.COM installed, we didn't even have DEBUG.COM - only the master control program (quite literally, a .BAT file), which didn't have a facility to put new apps on all the little DOS machines - admins had to do it manually. So we all got used to using COPY CON: C:\REBOOT.COM and some sort of Alt-key combo for "JMP FFFF", which defeats me since I haven't thought about it in 30 years or so .. but yeah. It was the last manual-install we did as an admin/dev team, as the reboot was needed so that we could finally add "Remotely administer Workstation Base Image" to the master control program/.BAT file and save ourselves endless late nights. ;)
      - donut 11y ago
        Nice. I recall writing REBOOT.COM myself by using EDIT.COM and writing two bytes (0xCD 0x18 by typing Alt-205 Alt-24, if I recall right) and saving it. That executes interrupt 0x18 which should start the BASIC interpreter in the ROM. But most PCs didn't have one, so instead it rebooted. I discovered this by experimentation :-) http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/50/22.html http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/50/22.html
throwaway2048 11y ago
he wasnt being fired for incompetence, he was about to be laid off as a data entrist, presumably because the machine was moving. but by figuring out how to sort the damn output he got offered a sysadmin position.