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* [TUHS] Who said ...
@ 2021-09-01 13:30 arnold
  2021-09-01 13:48 ` Clem Cole
  2021-09-01 16:10 ` Ron Natalie
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 20+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2021-09-01 13:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

...
	DEC Diagnositcs would run on a beached whale

?

Anyone remember and/or know?

(It seems to apply to other manufacturer's diagnostics as well, even today.)

Thanks,

Arnold

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 20+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Who said ...
@ 2021-09-01 14:16 Norman Wilson
  2021-09-01 14:23 ` arnold
                   ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 20+ messages in thread
From: Norman Wilson @ 2021-09-01 14:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Clem Cole:

  I believe the line was:  *"running **DEC Diagnostics is like kicking a dead
  whale down the beach.*"
  As for who said it, I'm not sure, but I think it was someone like Rob
  Kolstad or Henry Spencer.

=====

The nearest I can remember encountering before was a somewhat
different quote, attributed to Steve Johnson:

Running TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.

Since scj is on this list, maybe he can confirm that part.

I don't remember hearing it applied to diagnostics.  I can
imagine someone saying it, because DEC's hardware diags were
written by hardware people, not software people; they required
a somewhat arcane configuration language, one that made more
sense if you understood how the different pieces of hardware
connected together.

I learned to work with it and found it no less usable than,
say, the clunky verbose command languages of DEC's operating
systems; but I have always preferred to think in low levels.

DEC's diags were far from perfect, but they were a hell of a
lot better than the largely-nonexistent diags available for
modern Intel-architecture systems.  I am right now dealing
with a system that has an intermittent fault, that causes
the OS to crash in the middle of some device driver every
so often.  Other identical systems don't, so I don't think
it's software.  Were it a PDP-11 or a VAX I'd fire up the
diagnostics for a while, and have at least a chance of spotting
the problem; today, memtest is about the only such option,
and a solid week of running memtest didn't shake out anything
(reasonably enough, who says it's a memory problem?).

Give me XXDP, not just the Blue Screen of Death.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 20+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2021-09-01 21:48 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 20+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2021-09-01 13:30 [TUHS] Who said arnold
2021-09-01 13:48 ` Clem Cole
2021-09-01 13:55   ` John Cowan
2021-09-01 13:57   ` arnold
2021-09-01 14:11     ` Clem Cole
2021-09-01 14:26   ` Henry Bent
2021-09-01 15:08     ` Andrew Hume
2021-09-01 16:10 ` Ron Natalie
2021-09-01 16:42   ` Tom Lyon via TUHS
2021-09-01 17:41     ` Lawrence Stewart
2021-09-01 20:00       ` ron minnich
2021-09-01 20:04         ` ron minnich
2021-09-01 21:47           ` Rob Pike
2021-09-01 14:16 Norman Wilson
2021-09-01 14:23 ` arnold
2021-09-01 14:27 ` Clem Cole
2021-09-01 14:29 ` Henry Bent
2021-09-01 14:32   ` Clem Cole
2021-09-01 14:48 ` Chris Torek
2021-09-01 16:00 ` Ron Natalie

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