Very nice. My experience with DECs stuff was well after their prime. AT&T had several PDP11-34a machines that were used as head-ends for the test systems. They ran UNIX System V (what else) and no one really knew much about them because by that time, they were legacy and the original programmers had died.
I was the only one that had any knowledge of the things, and became the only person capable of copying hard disks from the master when one of the RLO1K -DC discs got phonographed from the head sitting on 0.
I miss that old stuff, it was a pain in the ass to keep going, but it had personality. Especially fun was the "Year 2000" garbage all of the computer systems, including ours, had to go through. It started simply enough (What is the date your real time clock currently states) but dived deep into doing weird shit on a low-level basis that you'd really have to be the designer of the device to perform.
Called my engineer up and said "Elvira has a date of 1976 in the RTC, I don't even see a battery on the card anymore. Want me to continue?" (Elvira was the name of unit #1 that did MLT-II and DCTU tests)
Nope. He just laughed and said "I'm surprised you even did any of that."
Especially fun was the "Year 2000" garbage all of the computer systems, including ours, had to go through. It started simply enough (What is the date your real time clock currently states) but dived deep into doing weird shit on a low-level basis that you'd really have to be the designer of the device to perform.
Yes, we had to go through all of our software and custom code to seek out any that used two digit year codes or print formats within the program, remedy it if it existed and prove the code whether the issue was discovered or not. I had written custom code to automate the test floor in the 1980s and was tasked with that review. Fortunately I found no issues, my custom code always used 4 digit formats when printing and in any computations involving the year. A lot of work for nothing.
Yes, it was. Fortunately, none of my stuff cared what the date was. It simply ran tests on telco frames.
The best software engineers are thoughtful, thorough and proactive when possible. You made the grade!
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