Re: To ride The Cycle or not to ride (was Re: INZSR weirdness)

[Jerry Adams <jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Carolla wrote:

> On 11/30/05, Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  
>
> > You youngsters don't remember OCL where we typed our commands directly
> > onto
> > the printer?  No screen at all?  My, what a breakthrough was that 6 x 40
> > screen!
> >    
>
> Wow... Sounds suspiciously like a typewriter -- are you sure they had you
> programming on the system ;-)
>
>  
It was a typewriter, Tony, but more like a telex.  I.e., it would type 
out the job status (there was only 1 or 2) and any error messages.  At 
least, that's what we had on some early S/3 Models.  But I think it was 
called OCC back then, rather than OCL.  Have you ever heard Charlie 
Massoglia speak?  Occasionally Charlie will, especially when talking 
about message responses, insert a comment like "Dial 'R' to retry."  The 
"Dial" harkens back to the fact that, to respond to error messages 
(before the typewriter/telex) one had to spin a dial on the front of the 
CPU to the desired response.  Even the "newbie" /34 and /36 people would 
have a confused look when he said "Dial," much less most of the /400 
people later on.  And the error message was a two [2] character display 
on the CPU.  We always had the error message manual handy so we could 
translate these cryptic messages - before we "dialed" anything.

Dick Mustain, one of the chief designers of the S/34, told me once that 
originally the /34 was supposed to be another S/3 (Model 4).  When they 
got through with it, it just didn't seem like a S/3, though.  He, also, 
wrote the command processor and gave a session on it once at COMMON. 

        * Jerry C. Adams
*iSeries Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
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