From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 19750 invoked from network); 1 Sep 2021 14:20:53 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 1 Sep 2021 14:20:53 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 4E0679D546; Thu, 2 Sep 2021 00:20:50 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8C4579BA1D; Thu, 2 Sep 2021 00:20:33 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id A0D5A9BA1D; Thu, 2 Sep 2021 00:20:31 +1000 (AEST) Received: from oclsc.com (oclsc.com [206.248.137.164]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3A0589B9F9 for ; Thu, 2 Sep 2021 00:20:30 +1000 (AEST) Received: by lignose.oclsc.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id F064F640CC6; Wed, 1 Sep 2021 10:16:38 -0400 (EDT) To: tuhs@tuhs.org Message-Id: <20210901141638.F064F640CC6@lignose.oclsc.org> Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2021 10:16:38 -0400 (EDT) From: norman@oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Who said ... X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "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