The ikon test
The Big Iron Meltdown part two
So Thorin’s band came for tea the next day. Dwarves hooded for service, unexpected waylay. Beards yellow, white, blue, his manner flustered at more, their belts silver and gold, thronged through his front door. Gandalf at last, came councillor to Thorin. Friends on the mat, introductions important. Cakes ale and coffee, red wine and some cheese, head Gandalf the party, dwarves number thirteen.
The first day I don’t recall at all. Perhaps I’ll detail the facility for you, from memory. Walk through either door into the main building straight to the Commissionaire’s desk in the centre. I don’t recall any stairs up to the fourth floor but that can’t be right, we would have always had to have ridden the elevator (how would I have let myself into such a trap otherwise?). We were that crew from three and four. The print shop was on the third floor with a lonely VAX off to the side. Informatics offices were there too, on the east. Mike Moore was head at the time. The print shop overlooked the front lawn to the west on the north side of the building. In the basement was the restaurant and passages to the two towers, R.H. Coates and Jean Talon. We made deliveries to mailboxes in each in addition to the user pick-up at the print shop.
On the fourth floor off the elevator straight ahead was the kitchen/break area. We were not to leave the building until our shift was over. There was a training room with A/V for lessons on video and a ramp from the kitchen to the gatekeeper and doors. We had our own personal commissionaire at a desk behind glass that controlled access to the machine room floor. In and out of the facility each and every shift, we submitted our ID cards. There were no exceptions only hard and fast rules.
Stepping through the doors partially into the room there was probably a ramp here too. The layout of the floor was easily a hundred feet wide and long. To the left was the tape technician bench which also had a door into the library which came out half way down that east wall. Along the north wall on the east side was the shielded wiring closet.
To the right was the windowed office jutting into the room about fifteen feet and half the span to the west wall. The alcove there contained DASD . The rest of the floor was open. The Big Iron lay straight ahead. An IBM 360/370 that would find its way elsewhere to be replaced by an Amdahl 5880. There was state of the art there for that time. Other machines on the floor were clustered along the south and west wall. All mini-computers; HP, Perkin-Elmer, Univac maybe, others.
The door from the tape library half way down the east wall led to the focal point of the operations for about thirty feet out from the open doorway was the main console. It had a plasma display, cutting edge for its day, sitting in the middle of a long table with another monitor on it. It’s a very impressive sight with the right someone sitting there looking back towards the door of the library over top of the display.
Everything in this area of the operation was also arranged with a Feng shui precision and a military code of naming to match. Half-way between the main console and the library door were back to back 3179 standing consoles with a bin of rings between them. A pair of CS-3s would station and direct the CS-2s and 1s to service mount requests for the tape drives arrayed about them. Perhaps a dozen 2400 tape drives. Later replacing some and adding more 3480s before I left. The arts of the computer operator were diminishing when I did, but before I did, the operator Olympics were on.
Inside the library door was the fetch console. It printed volume requests from the library to be mounted on a drive. The job of a CS-1 was to service that request. That would have been some of my first duties, but I probably didn’t touch anything for at least a week. I had training to do and lots of it. I got into it as all us newbies did; Silvain, Connie, Val, Gord.
There were three shifts, Sunday night to Friday evening and I had no other life. Every week would be a shift change, nights to evenings, evenings to days, days to nights. The long week-end, off Friday morning and not having to be back until Monday evening was perhaps the only way to recoup. It also left some room for mischief. We did everything together. The crew was all I knew for a time. I have some fond memories. Let me introduce you to some of them.
Ron was a biker type with his boots and jeans, hands in the back pockets, palms out. He had a big beard with piercing eyes above and teeth grinning out from the middle. He had long hair and bobbed his head as he listened to you and then stood still to say something in response, smile and start to bob his head waiting for a reply. He often hovered behind the main console operator, pacing back and forth in a slow rhythm, hands in his back pockets. Otherwise, he would sit way back in his chair behind and just off to one side of the main ops, stretched out and looking at the ceiling. Either mode he was in he would start away in a rush to the office seemingly as though queue’d to go and set to run. He strode quickly with a jingling from his chain. He mostly hung out in the office.
His sidekick, right hand man, John was just as biker type looking with his tight jeans and biker boots, muscular too. He spent most of his time behind the main console operator. Except for the interviews, he was pretty much invisible to me. The leads on the other shifts I don’t recall even though I spent some time on one. Alana, perhaps. The team leads on our shift were Greg, the punster and Fred. Mass, Rick, Jane and Sheldon were CS-3s. Phil, Bud, Judy and Jack were CS-2s.
It was a very different experience, this shift life, quite unique. The indentured crew were very comfortable with each other. Entering into this exclusive domain us newbies formed our own cohesive unit.
Then Phil told of a secret twist. Jane used to be a CS-4 but defied Ron. Phil did impressions too. His of Jane were remarkable for its simplicity and likeness in a simple motion, to a tee. He’d do my barking laugh too. I did tire of Phil eventually. Not much was talked about it but just before we showed up there had been a big shake–up and whole teams had been disassembled and complete units reorganized.
Rick was the Frenchman with a slingin’ slang. I hung out with him a few times. He was on Jane’s side. The order also had its subgroups as I further discovered the tighter I became within and without. There was a leader and there was The leader and in both cases it was Ron. You had to choose who you would follow and confound favoritism. Jane was kept away from every one. She strutted with a distinctive upright posture. That’s what Phil imitated. She used to be a manager at MacDonald’s. Her performance seemed perfunctory. She had no real zeal for the job and eyes only for the task at hand, throughout the whole shift. She was so distant. Not so outside of work. She held our last party together. The only time she had ever gone crewing after hours it seems.
Mass breathed in through his nose, eyes widening and say “Yeah!” and then smile. He was smart and he lived at home and had a girlfriend. He was a momma’s boy Italian. Sheldon, at the time I joined had a cast on his arm. He was training CS-4 and looked it. He had a stern look on his face and when he moved he did it with purpose. I liked Sheldon, hard to talk to, that first face though.
Bud was the shop steward for the union. He was in his fifties with a goodly sized hanging gut and creaky knees. He wanted to finish out in the tape library. They had day hours. The only crew that did.
I asked him jokingly, “I pay dues but I don’t get a say nor can I participate in action. What’s up with that?”
“Yoou’re on t-term.” He would stutter. His farts stank too and he always got me in the tower cubby drops when we delivered in the wee hours of the morning.
All of us CS-1s stayed on term for the duration of the Census work. We all hoped for a permanent position. We felt confident based on the last number of hires that the next lot could include a few of us. Us newbies, four month terms at a time for who knows how long and in the meantime, there’s a society here that is a world unto itself and I’m in it. Whether we’re in the machine room or later, at home, alone, trying to block the daylights out of our night there was a sense of belonging to a private domain, an exclusive club.
Connie wore nothing but skin tight leotards from stem to stern. Even if it didn’t happen, she was forever picking them out of her crotch and ass. We got along great. Silvain was the other Frenchmen and he and I talked about PCs all the time at the fetch console. We were split up to be trained up to at least CS-3 and I recall doing a CS-4 duty once. Val was quiet always. She had been a translator within the government. Came from Europe, lived with her brother. There were other CS-1s and several more that came and went.
Gord was one of the first on and first out. He wore a pair of ripped track pants that let his junk hang out when he turned left. He completed his exit with a handstand on 3480. I missed that but I was in perfect position to describe what happened to stop everyone in their tracks that memorable moment.
Everyone except Ron, his stride was long and quick.
I looked at around at the CS-3s at the mount consoles. Their pale, blank faces looking away from their dumb monitors towards the main console.
The first task we were given was to monitor the icon. We had no idea what that was, us newbies. Could I have looked towards the main console? It probably didn’t take long but it did take longer than it should have. There was a cross-over period of four minutes between shifts to exchange any relevant operational situations with the replacement shift. They would basically come in and take charge before their shift started. We did the same. No easing into it, take command as soon as you step onto the floor.
Everyone kept watch on the clock waiting for it to tick the twenty-ninth minute. All our shifts started on the half-hour, 7:30, 3:30 and 11:30 and ended a minute earlier than that and officially marked by the Ikon digital clock on the wall above the fetch console, in the office and in the print shop.
