We last left our intrepid hero at the computer center at school with a head full of chads due to someone's idea of a good prank. Time to get even.
The IBM 1620 computer that the students used had no operating system (such as Windows) as our computer do today. It worked very simply. Once the program "compiler" was loaded, it would just sit and wait for student programs to be loaded into the card reader machine. On the console, it would just say the word COMPILATION. It would then read the student's program card deck, and then say ERROR if errors were found, or EXECUTION if the program was correct. The student's program would then run and cards would be punched with the program output. The console would then type COMPILATION again and wait for the next student.
Being a true hacker by that time (hacker in the old, good sense), I had learned the machine language of the 1620 and how to type machine language programs directly into the console. I then typed in a little program that would say COMPILATION and EXECUTION as it read the cards, but actually do nothing. If a student put a card deck into it, he would think it was working, but actually not. I then sat back and watched the frustration mount!
My latter college days passed fairly quickly, it seems. I was both working and studying, as I was putting myself through school by that point in time. So I was certainly job and career oriented when senior job interviews came around. 1969 was a great year for jobs, and I had many job interviews. The first was with IBM. We were really wined and dined, including a dinner in New York City with some minor pro football player. We were then brought by limousine up to Kingston NY for tours and the actual job interviews.
IBM was unbelievably impressive. The awesome size of the site, the benefits, the quality of the people, availability of computer hardware to play with, and the challenge of the jobs offered set a standard that no other company I interviewed with could match. I eventually got tired of running around the country looking at other firms, cancelled all my pending interviews, and started my lifetime with IBM.
I arrived at IBM for my first day clean-shaven and of course still wet behind the ears. There were so many new hires that year that we filled the main cafeteria (which was quite large). Even that first day, I met friends that I still have.
My first assignment was in Advanced Large Processor Design - probably one of the most prestigious areas to work in, as that was where IBM developed its huge mainframe computers. Most of the work I did was to write programs to simulate the operation of computers that were being designed, in order to verify our designs and to project performance. To run these massive programs our department had its own IBM 360 model 75 computer.
Now, to give you an idea of how significant and big a 360/75 was in those days: It filled a huge room; there were probably only a dozen in existence in the world, and NASA had I believe five of them to be used in Mercury capsule launches. For me, this was the big time!
The computer had two model 1403N1 printers. These were massive boxes about the size of two refrigerators. One of their more humorous aspects was that the entire top of the printer would automatically pivot open when it needed another box of paper. But the height of the printer was perfect to lean on, and a perfect place to leave your coffee cup. At least two times a week, the printer cover would rise, dumping somebody's coffee on the floor! After my "initiation" to this problem, I was able to join the ranks of the in-crowd, watching for the next newbe to repeat the mistake.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).