Geez, my ears have been ringing for days, now I know why...
Kraig: No 5081's ? We used cassette drives for firmware loading on the older Unisys disk drive controllers - this was when a controller was the size of an apartment refrigerator and controlled a "string" of disk drives 100 feet long that all looked like double stacked pizza ovens, with drawers that slid out to remove the disk packs that went in holders that looked like large cake carriers. The cassette drives were notoriously finicky and we were fortunate that as long as any drive controller was still running (we typically had 4-6 strings of drives running)you could cross load the firmware from one controller to another. One of my "fondest memories" is standing, with the Unisys Field Engineer and our Unisys sales representative, in the Director's office, explaining why, in a momentary failure of reasoning, I powered the last string off, then dealt with a two hour outage while the FE tried to get ANY cassette to read on ANY of the firmware loaders. (understanding that while this was going on every cop in the state was PO'd because their "holding on the roads" got turned loose)..The backup procedure was to force a load from a card reader using decks of - yes, Kraig - firmware programs punched on ----- 5081's. (5081 was IBM's stock number for the old standard 80 column punch card, it became a reference standard for the industry like "kleenex" or "xerox"..) I still have a stack out in the shop that I used for note paper..
BTW - Anybody here on - gasp - Facebook?
Doing great these days, have put about 2300 miles on Big Blue in a little over a month - without any trips longer than 220 miles. The 129 is doin' fine and I started spinning bolts out of the 149 - I need to see if the PO screwed the Hydro's input shaft up when he put the clamp style U-joint on it. Other than trying to kill Bambi the other night (look at the truck and it looks fine, but needs a lower facia and fender - I'm betting two grand), and making runs to a friend's place in the Saginaw area, life is - uhhh- pretty "normal" these days
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