12 Mar
2023
12 Mar
'23
9:11 p.m.
I was actually asking Bob, but I didn't know you were also at DEC. Cool.
What you describe sounds very similar to what offline files in TOPS-20
ended up like.
Anyway, I was at DEC in 1986, in Stockholm. Working in IS, mostly taking
care of a VMS system that customers could rent time on, and doing media
conversion for customers. (Lots of weird requests for weird media came
through, and I had to deal with all kind of trouble generating hardware...)
I didn't have a permanent position, and I have no recollection if I had
a badge with a number, or what that number was.
Anyway, it was interesting.
Johnny
On 2023-03-12 21:05, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
Gee, I thought he was asking me...
For what it's worth, I was with DEC in the Galaxy group from late 1978
to late 1980. I worked on the File Finder project, which was an online
database to keep track of backup tapes and the contents therein.
So if you zorched a file and wanted to restore it, you'd run File Finder
and find out what tape (or tapes) it was on and away you went. An
earlier version had been written in COBOL, which was using fixed length
records that were scanned sequentially. It rapidly blew up disk space
as well as having order O(N) CPU usage.
We got as far as designing a b-tree structured database, partly because
of the discovery process involved but mostly because we were given some
very poor implementation restrictions. It's too bad; it could have
easily been integrated into Galaxy, so once you found what you wanted,
you could get the mount request in and trigger the archive system's
restore process, which would have been very seamless. These days,that
kind of functionality is found everywhere (Veritas, Time Machine, Etc.)
I can't remember my badge number, but I still have it. Somewhere... I
can' barely remember what building I was in Marlboro. I think #3? (the
one on the right hand side closest to manufacturing and the upper
parking lot). I do remember the Galaxy group's machine, 2116 ("The Big
Orange Welcomes You") and, oddly enough, my sign-on id, "DEBELLIS" :-)
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 3/12/23 10:56 AM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
I quit in 1985. Badge number 147367 (still have it memorized :)
Bob
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Johnny Billquist<bqt(a)softjar.se> wrote:
> When were you at DEC?
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