NY Times FAA article: more comp.software.year-2000 followup
Below is another gem from Cory Hamasaki:
======================================================================
Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000
From: kiyoinc@ibm.net (cory hamasaki)
Subject: Re: Media Sighting: Ny Times on the FAA
Reply-To: kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net (cory hamasaki)
Date: 14 Jan 98 13:04:49 GMT
In <34bc4b05.203797770@news.calgary.telusplanet.net>, ttoews@telusplanet.net (Tony Toews) writes:
>http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/011398shortage.html
>
>[Confirming what many had stated in this newsgroup. I decide to post
>the entire article as it's very interesting. My comments are enclosed
>in square brackets.]
Thanks Tony, It's much easier for me to see the article in USENET than on
the web, I fire up Netscape for Rick's chatroom.
> The extent of problems with the air traffic computers is not certain,
>but experts say that the 3083 mainframe model referred to in a letter
>from IBM to an FAA contractor, might, for example, refuse to accept
>flight plans for planes that take off on December 31, 1999, and land
>on Jan. 1. That landing would be 99 years in the past, from the
>computer's point of view.
>
>[Ummm, a 3083. Weren't those built in the mid 80's? Surely Cory's
>desktop MVS on a card is more powerful, has more memory and MIPS?]
I didn't know that the FAA had replaced the 360/50's with 3083's. The 3083
is an early 1980's machine, pre-XA, pre-ESCON.
The 360/50 is a quarter MIPS air cooled CPU with selector and byte MUX
channels. It would give an 8088 a run.
The 3083 has a CPU cooled by chilled water and pressurized helium circulating
through cool plates with pistons that press on the integrated circuits. A
3083 is about a powerful as a Pentium-Pro. It has a single 3+ MIPS CPU.
It's a little more powerful than my desktop mainframe. My system is rated at
2+ MIPS but I can increase the clock and get almost 3 MIPS.
> Monte Belger, the associate administrator for Air Traffic Services,
>said in an interview that the FAA should know within 90 days whether
>the computers can be de-bugged. The problem is that the date
>functions are not in programming languages, like Fortran or Cobol, but
>in machine language -- strings of ones and zeros more basic to the
>computer than even the operating system.
>
>[90 days? 90 FREAKING DAYS FROM NOW? Why not a bloody year ago!
>ASSEMBLER??? <he moaned, head in hands> Cory's right. If they had
>any sense at all, which they don't they'll get the brightest and best
>of the assembler heads together but no...]
It's a death march. A commercial assembler programmer, someone who codes
insurance or banking applications has a ramp-up cost when switching to this
kind of work.
>the FAA had planned to replace the computers by 2003 and would like to
>do so sooner because IBM says spare parts for the mainframes,
>installed in the late 1980s, are rapidly disappearing.
There seems to be a rule that after 15 years, the parts disappear, people
forget how to fix it, and the things start to breakdown.
>
>The computers in question are at the 20 Air Route Traffic Control
>Centers, which handle all the high-altitude, long-distance traffic in
>the country. The 3083 models were once common in business and industry
>but few remain in service, experts say. IBM stopped shipping them
>about 10 years ago, but some of the software on the FAA models is even
>older, dating from the early 1970s.
Yoo-hoo, any denial-heads here? What about quickee solution peddlers? Let's
chip in and send Timmy or Dash to tell the FAA and IBM how to fix the 3083.
..that's a little unfair to Timmy and Dash but I haven't had my morning
coffee yet, I'm sitting here with morning-breath, what hair I have left
sticking out in funny angles, my gut hanging over my underpants and for some
reason, the socks I wore yesterday still on my feet.
>
>The FAA has 250 separate computer systems, most of which will require
>fixes but the 3083 is the only one that IBM says can't be debugged
>before 2000.
Denial heads, please read the above line slowly and move your lips. " . IBM
. says . can't . be . debugged . before . 2000 . "
>
>[Hmmm sounds like the assembler is using 3083 unique stuff? Or maybe
>the assembler is using only a specific hard drive by hard coding the
>sector, track and cylinder numbers for utmost speed? Or ??? But then
>I'm not a main framer.]
It's not that, Tony, the 360/50 had some special modifications to the
electronics to help with driving the FAA's displays and communications. I'm
guessing that similar modifications were made to the 3083.
>
>In the FAA's case, the computers are called the "hosts," and are used
>to receive data from radar scattered across thousands of square miles
>and integrate the images into a mosaic. Then the hosts divide that
>picture into sectors, the subdivisions that controllers use, and pass
>the data on to other computers that drive the screens at the
>controllers' work stations. The 3083's also receive signals from each
>plane stating its identity, type of equipment, altitude and
>destination and helps tag each radar blip with the appropriate data.
>
>[Uh oh, this sounds like one of those critical systems, doesn't it?
>This ones gotta work.]
Where's that Ya-hoo who was argueing with us about 6 months ago about how the
FAA didn't have a problem.
>
> In the October letter from IBM to the FAA contractor Lockheed Martin
>Air Traffic Management, it said, "IBM remains convinced that the
>appropriate skills and tools do not exist to conduct a complete Year
> 2000 test assessment" of the 3083 computers. "IBM believes it is
>imperative that the F.A.A. replace the equipment" before 2000.
>
But did Low Morale understand IBM's letter? Denial-heads, IBM is sticking
it's neck out on this one. There are no weasle-words in the quote. It's
simple, shock-em, don't let them wish for skills and tools that don't exist,
language. There's too much ..I'm wishing for a solution so one must exist,
going on. IBM is working hard to stomp out that fantasy.
>
> Others are still worried. Fanfalone of the technician's union said,
>"There's only two folks at IBM who know the micro-code, and they're
>both retired.
>
>[Yikes. So one has a heart attack and the other decides to move to
>Fiji.]
Certainly both are dottering old fools, they didn't retire... I'd bet they
were given the golden heave-ho in the RIFs of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Get the H*** outa here, you useless old natterer, and don't let the door hit
your behind on the way out, we want cheap young EE's who know micro processors
not you expensive geezers who invented most of the technology that runs the
civilized world.
>
> "The FAA pulled one of them in, to go through the code, but they
>should have brought 10 software people over," he said.
>
>[10. Not enough. Maybe 10 very, very good competent people who don't
>have to attend meetings and are allowed to concentrate on thier work.
>Oh, and you'd better pay them whatever it takes to keep them. And if
>it means $200,000 or $400,000 per year then bloody well do it.]
100 or 200/hour? To save the FAA's hairy behind? If the FAA had half a brain
in the 1980s and 1990s, they would have paid IBM and Low Morale to keep the
skills around, kind of the way every city and town pays for firemen to sleep
and watch TV, policemen to drive around, eat donuts, and be available.
The Y2K fire is about to break out. 200/hour is cheap, you're not paying
firemen to sit around any more, you're paying Red Adaire to put out burning
oilwells. Try 2,000/hour, try 20,000/hour.
>
>Tony
Cory Hamasaki |
