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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (1653)	5/4/1998 2:13:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

TCAM (Mainframe software) dependency This is not so funny... John ____________ 'On Sat, 2 May 1998 02:16:05, bks@netcom.com (Bradley K. Sherman) wrote: > In article <6idsuk$5r5$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <fedinfo@halifax.com> wrote: > >THEY WERE NOT TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON COMPUTERES THEN. > > > >THEY ARE NOW. > > > >Get the difference, butthead? > > They're not changing the laws of physics on 1 Jan 00, Paul. > Trains still have engineers and you have presented no > evidence that even one locomotive will be disabled > by a Y2K bug. The tracks are certainly not going to > be affected. As I said, schedule degradation yes, > shutdown no. Rig the switches for manual operation > if they don't already have that capability. Actually > the trains might do rather well as they have their > own electric power ('cept for electric trains of course) > and thus will have telecom. > > --bks Ah but they have changed the laws of physics. This is another of my incredible insights... (this bit of hype is inserted for nubies) Prior to 1990, very roughly, trains moving up and down the East Coast went to the big switching yard near Washington National Airport (now called the Ronald McDonald Washington National Airport). Oops back up 10 years. In 1980, very roughly I saw the source code to a TCAM MCP that the AAR, the American Association of Railroads uses to keep track of box cars. At that time VTAM had been out for a while, and I was surprised to learn that anyone was still running TCAM. FYI, I am one of perhaps 500 people in the whole world who has written TCAM message handlers. First you need to crank assembler, know multi-programming services, TCAM internals... blah-blah. .not too many of us around... where was I? Oh yeah, there's probably ten times as may CICS internals mechanics as TCAM mechanics. Am I nattering yet? Anyway thoughout the 1980's and 1990's, I heard rumors of a plan to build hotels and office buildings on the railroad switchyard. Dummy that I am, I figured they would drive pilings and deck over the switchyard. What's a switchyard? It's a place that trains decouple freight cars, switch -em around and reconstruct shipments, like planes going to a hub. Guys in towers see the trains, figure out how to re-jigger them, and someone pulls on levers. In about 1995, they started tearing up the switchyard. It's gone now and there are a bunch of big-box stores there. The Washington Post reported that since they have computers, they can switch the trains on the fly all up and down the East coast and they don't need the switching yard. Well, fiddle-di-di. since they have computers? Not anymore. Here's the convergence... I saw the source to the program. It was huge pile of greenbar fanfold assembler listings. So here's the fun part, all heavy commerce on the Eastern side of the U.S. depends on a complex assembler program that is infested with dates, times, really odd macros and there are perhaps 500 people in the entire world who can work on it. There's probably 50-100 people with the skillsets in New York because TCAM runs the financial community too. TCAM - Telecommunications Access Method, QTAM with reusuable disk queues. MCP - Message Control Program CICS - Customer Information and Control System, CICS started out using BTAM to drive terminals, later versions used TCAM and VTAM as TP access methods. VTAM - Virtual Telecommunications Access Method. Access Method, what PeeCeeWeeNee's call an IFS, installable file system. Sidebar, TSO, the Time Sharing Option of MVT, MVS, (SVS), OS/390, etc. also used TCAM and VTAM as TP access methods. IBM distributed a 'canned' TCAM MCP for TSO. That's not what I'm talking about. The MCP that I saw was clearly hand written for the application... and it was huge. If they still had the switch yard, bks would be right. It's gone, paul is right, they can't switch the trains without computers. But there are still 607 days left. Maybe the railroads will outbid NY banks and financial companies for TCAM internals assembler programmers? Let's start the bidding at $500/hour... cory hamaski I still have the full set of TCAM manuals that they gave us at TCAM Operation and Design class. _____ Subject: Re: Handwriting On The Wall For Buttheads Date: 4 May 1998 05:04:09 GMT From: kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net (cory hamasaki) Organization: IBM.NET Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000 References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

To: John Mansfield who wrote (1653)	5/4/1998 2:18:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

' I95 is the major N-S corridor and it runs at capacity.' Some further elaboration on the railtrack problems. John _______ 'On Mon, 4 May 1998 06:06:13, Robert Sturgeon <i638573@mail.calwest.net> wrote: > Bradley K. Sherman wrote: > > > > In article <7kepWhCNP4qd-pn2-jPeigQLvjCUM@localhost>, > > cory hamasaki <kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net> wrote: > > > > > >If they still had the switch yard, bks would be right. It's gone, paul is > > >right, they can't switch the trains without computers. > > > > > Sorry Cory. This does not scan. Are you implying that the > > physical manifestations of the trains are being switched > > inside computers? I think you're blowing smoke here. > > Gee, don't you know ANYTHING about railroads? Did you skip over the > whole point of the posting? There are these two ways of marshalling > trains and putting them together and running them. One uses a big ol' > switchyard with a bunch of people to put the trains together. The other > is to use computers to track the trains, engines, and individual cars > and control the trains by adding and subtracting cars on the various > sidings all along the Eastern Seaboard. The railroads have torn up the > switchyards and now MUST depend on computers to control the makeup of > trains. No functioning computers = no railroad deliveries. For a > similar result, see the Union Pacific's disastrous takeover of SP/ATSF. > Bob, bks is an astounding piece of denial. <note, I'm not attacking bks, just observing a phenomenum.> Thanks for the effort and clarification. There was no alternative to switch yards until computers and reliable computer driven communication. That's why they used switch yards. The Arlington-Alexandria (note it spanned two counties) switch yard was huge. It was next to extremely expensive office buildings and hotels, almost walking distance to the Pentagon. All heavy freight on the East coast used to pass through this switch yard, it was like the Fed Ex hub except they were juggling freight cars instead of overnight letters. The yard is gone, torn up, converted to stores and this just happened last year. It is physically no longer possible to switch freight cars without computers. Match this up with Erich's reports on how rail really works. This one specialized program (it's a system) is the key to keeping the food, fuel, materials, products, moving on the East coast. Sure, you can run a few trains manually, but at a fraction of the capacity of the current computer managed system. ...and please don't suggest that we can move freight by truck. I've driven the Washington Beltway, Wilson Bridge, I95, Route 50, I395, mixing bowl. That's not possible either. I95 is the major N-S corridor and it runs at capacity. The distributed switching system is the only physical way to move freight. If it fails, it's milne-time in the big city. As to what will happen? I don't know. They don't have the systems staff to pull 10 years of deferred maintenance and testing in 606 days. They can't do it by hand, they don't have the switch yards. If they try to do distributed switching using people, the trains and cars will get lost. Not that there are a lot of people around who understand trains. Like everyone else, they've been dumbing-down, cheaping out the staff for 10-15 years. That game is over but the corps, horn-hairs don't seem to realize it. The UP fiasco was just a taste of what's about to happen. > > UP was not in fedinfo@halifax land. Their computers were running. > Their programs were enscrewed. Their trains were not running. > > -- > Robert (West Coast secret agent, Prieure de Sion) Sturgeon- > > "Et in Arcadia Ego" ____ Subject: Re: Handwriting On The Wall For Buttheads Date: 4 May 1998 13:00:01 GMT From: kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net (cory hamasaki) Organization: IBM.NET Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000 References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6