Re: Gary's Recollections of Delta

[Ron Dozier <dozier@udel.edu>]

<snip>

Unlike Gary, the "fun" for me is troubleshooting and designing.  Whether
it be computer programs, instrumentation or mechanical entities.  I do
enjoy writing the snippit that makes something work, making the widget the
first time or making the seemingly impossible work the first time.

Many of the reasons, I seem to go unnoticed because I don't contribute to
the bottom line.  There was an instance where a graduate student and a
researcher wooked for 8 hours, 16 man hours trying to figure out why
something was sparking over the weekend.  When they told me about it, I
discovered the problem and fixed it in 5 minutes.  The equipment had a bad
ground.  Just plug it in a different outlet.

Or, why did a new PDP-11 smoke.  It turns out that only if two plugs were
plugged into a wall outlet the grounds would let go and the switching
supplu of the 11 would raise the ground of the other device by 70 VAC. 
There are many such outlets in our building, greater than 470 total and
many were affected.  No sensitive equipment is plugged into an outlet
without being tested first.  It was too expensive to change them all. 

Even though Dave Haislet gets credit for coding scope rubouts to the
terminal handler, I was very instrumental as to how to add them.
So Alan - that was some of what I did at Delta.  

Ron

  The fun is
> in writing the code, not using it.  It's also fun modifying the simulator
> because it's kind of like doing hardware in software.  It's given me a whole
> new perspective on interrupts and such.
> 
> Gary
>