A case for downgrading to PCs (was: WARNING: RANTING COMPUTER NUT...

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Wed Jun 16 14:19:46 2004

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004, David V. Corbin wrote:
> Fair warning, the following message contains the ratings of a single
> individual.
> >>>> Sounds like somebody grabbed the old machines when a school downgraded
> their computer facilities to PCs...
> As shown by the above quote, there is a strong anti "PeeCee" bias by many

Yes, there IS a strong anti "PeeCee" bias.
But the above quote is NEUTRAL, and does NOT show it.

Let me tell you about when a school downgraded their computer
facilities to PCs...

It was in 1983,...
The community college taught DP, using a PDP11. I'm not sure
of the specific model, because I came in later.

They taught COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC, PASCAL, and did RJE to some
sort of modern 360 (4381?), which also did, and still does,
all of the administrative computing.

The DP department computer had a third party drive,
and they had LOTS of problems.
The DEC field service people would get it running, and often
had to exceed the speed limit to get out of sight before it
went down again.

But the real clincher was one time that it went down, and stayed
down for MOST of the semester. Try teaching compiled languages
without a computer!

The head of the DP department made a major decision.
They replaced the computer with a few dozen PCs! He had seen the
corners that I had cut to save money on my PC, so they bought the
5150s with FDC cards and CGA cards, and put in aftermarket RAM,
floppy drives, and B&W composite monitors.

They ran PC-DOS 2.0, and ran IBM (rebadged MICROS~1) FORTRAN,
COBOL, PASCAL, and BASIC.
Now, the worst possible single malfunction would reduce capacity
5%, rather than disabling the entire department.


And they hired me to teach a Microcomputer Operating System class
(which I had been teaching with TRS-DOS and Apple-DOS on another
campus). When the FORTRAN teacher unexpectedly left, they handed
me his classes, and I got one of the much coveted tenure-track
full-time positions!


But the story doesn't quite end there, although most of the rest
of the story is from third party sources who will deny it.
They sold the [working, but unreliable] PDP-11 to a local school
district. (Richmond, now "West Contra Costa")
It was very cheap, because they made no secret of the problems
that it had had.

The school district called in PG&E (the power company) to connect it.
The PG&E "technician" didn't understand the difference between
delta and Y three phase! The computer was seriously damaged.
(PG&E did the same thing with the wiring for the compressor in my
automobile garage 10 years previously)

PG&E cut a deal - that if everyone would go along with a fiction
that the computer had been struck by lightning, then PG&E would
buy the school district a new one!

So,...
the DP department got a lab full of PCs, which solved the issue
of reliability.
The R.U.S.D. got a brand new computer for next to nothing.
Some PG&E technicians got some retraining.


Meanwhile, on the other end of the campus, the electronics
department also had a PDP-11, but the electronics department
was soon being closed down because the administration believed
that "NOBODY ever repairs anything anymore". The administration
dumpstered the computer! One of the teachers salvaged it from
the dumpster(s) in violation of school rules and policies. But he
was having major problems of his own (divorce, moving, lack of storage
space, lack of money to rent space,...) so he stuck the stuff into his
back yard, intending to do something with it "right away", ... and the
computer stuff stayed in his back yard until what was left of it was
rescued a few months ago.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin_at_xenosoft.com
"Those that can, do.
Those that can't, teach.
Those that can't teach, administrate."
		== H.L. Mencken
Received on Wed Jun 16 2004 - 14:19:46 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:36:58 BST