Re: Claim to faim

[Rich Thomson <rthomson@ptc.com>]

In article <199805010040.UAA11721@shandakor.tharsis.com> ,
    George Robbins <grr@shandakor.tharsis.com>  writes:
> Also the crash dump buffer dumper gave us the notion that you could
> write a program that could peek at the input buffers and what what
> people we typing on the fly.  Some DEC guy claimed that it couldn't
> be done, the information was too transient, but we tried it anyway -
> I think Clark did the coding but it was kind of a cooperative effort,
> and it actually worked quite nicely. 8-)

This sounds like the WATCH/FORCE duo of priv utilities that I got in
trouble over :).  I used FORCE to type what seemed like "line noise"
and spurious erase characters into a high school user's input stream.
I remember looking at the source code for this -- all these magic
PEEKs at various locations in the system area (had to be priveleged to
do that) to read the I/O buffers and POKEs at other magic locations to
insert your keyboard input into the victim's input buffers.  Now that
I think about this, is there any legitimate reason for a program like
FORCE?

Tangent: I remember Ron Dozier explaining how BASIC-PLUS code was
really compiled internally into "push-pop code" and that everything we
wrote in BASIC-PLUS was really executed as a stack machine.  Gee,
sounds just like Java with its virtual machine instructions derived
from C++-ish object-oriented code, huh?  The more things change, the
more they stay the same. :)

> Another thing they did was work with the FE to install "memory protect"
> switches on each of the memory modules that held the system stuff.

Hey!  That reminds me, what was the name of the DEC field engineer who
would periodically come down to fix our broken DECwriters?  I'm
drawing a complete blank on the guy's name, but he was friendly and
apparently had a certain fondness for DELTA.

Lots of people have mentioned Teresa Green in one way or another, but
I'm sorry to say that she draws a complete blank in my mind.  I guess
she was out of the picture by the time things moved to Willard Hall, or
I was just too unimportant to be of any concern to her?  (I have a
distinct memory of being constantly dismissed because I was "just some
kid" -- I think that's a direct quote from Uffelman!)  The only memory
I have is of Ed Jones mentioning her -- but I can't even remember what
he said or what context in which the conversation took place.
--
                                               Rich Thomson
                                               rthomson@ptc.com