Gene Heskett wrote:
On Tuesday 21 November 2006 13:05, George Arseneault wrote:
--- Tim <ignored_mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 2006-11-20 at 10:49 -0800, George Arseneault
wrote:
Actually 'real' debugging was when they ran
distilled
water over the circuits to remove the dead bugs.
(Back
when computers took up their own building)
Hmm, just water?
It's years since I've actually seen a real
mainframe, though this was a
transistorised one. Great big metal cabinets, where
you opened up the
doors to a rat's nest of wire-wrap, and it used
water-cooling through
the doors as well as the rest of the cabinet.
Theoretically, pure water does *not* conduct
electricity. It's the other particles (ions,
whatever) that allow it to conduct. So, it *should*
be safe to run the water over running circuits.
<snip>
The original 'bug' was found by Grace Hopper (look her up on google, its
very educational) and was purportedly a moth crushed between a relays
contacts somewhere in the 60 years ago era.
Nice lady, aka Mother of Cobol. I have one of her nano-seconds that she
handed out at a seminar one time.
WRT mainframes, in the late '70s, U2 (tube based Univac) was still being
used to produce civilian payroll at the Boston Naval Shipyard. Boxes of
tubes were stored behind the tape drives (I was told the tapes were
steel bands, but never saw one).
--
Regards,
Old Fart
(my reply-to address is "munged" to defeat spambots)
