'From:
Francis A. Ney, Jr <croaker@access.digex.net>
4:09
Subject:
Re: IRS--How Are They Doing With Y2K?
> From: no.spam@this.net (Mail: Y2000 infomagic com)
> Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 00:57:17 GMT
>
> >Correction: It's a whole bunch of data entry terminals emulating a 1403
> >reader, said emulation running on Unisys/IBM minis.
>
> Er, Frank,
>
> The 1403 is a printer. Don't you mean a 2540 or 2501?
>
> (I have senior moments, too)
Well, maybe the guy that wrote it had a senior moment. I got to witness a
full start-up of a data entry section (this was early February, just before
the seasonals came in for the start of filing season) at Cincinnati Service
Center (which is really in Covington KY, a real shit-hole). The mini's
console screen showed "IBM 1403 EMULATION" along with a bunch of other junk.
Don't remember seeing any 2500-series numbers and the 1403 was rather
prominent.
Dunno. I know next-to-nothing about Autocoder, maybe this was just a program
name, or something. I do know at the time they were playing games with the
executables to get it running -- no source to be found -- and they had been
doing it every year for about ten years.
CSC had about twelve data entry sections, four were active at any one time
(shift-work) at the height of filing season. In each section, there were
about 80 terminals that fed 2 of these minis. Every four hours, the disk pack
was changed for an empty one, which was sent on to the mainframe for entry
into the pipeline processor. At one time they were trying to network the
minis into the system so they wouldn't have to change packs (they were also
running out of good packs). There are no printers tied to this set-up. The
supervisor got back reports from the pipeline systems after the disk packs
were fed in.
The 1999 filing season is going to be a bit interesting, to say the least.
Frank Ney N4ZHG WV/EMT-B VA/EMT-A LPWV NRA(L) GOA CCRKBA JPFO
Abuses by the BATF access.digex.net
"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but how are we going to get all those computers to
fail all at the same time?" |
