On Fri, 2 Jul 1999, Denis Voitenko wrote:
> Today I was invited to help a company deal with the Y2K. What I saw there
> basically brought me to my knees.
Buck up, kiddo. Some of us have actually been *working* on this stuff
since before you were born. You don't have to do it alone.
> They have a monstrous box, about 6x10x8 feet that is too old to be a
> mainframe.
Naah. What'd you do, sleep through history class? IBM started selling
704's before Elvis. If it's only 20 years old, that puts it... hmmm.
S/360, S/370, S/3x, PDP-11, DG Nova, Cado, Basic/Four, Wang or a ton of
other likely suspects.
> The owner of the company said it is about 20 years old.
> Considering that I am 19 you might figure out how I felt. So the deal
> is, the system of some unknown name has only one terminal and a
> printer.
Sounds more like a mini than a mainframe. If it's got a free standing
video terminal, get the manufacturer, model, type, etc and it may help ID
the box. If it's a built-in CRT/keyboard, the list of suspects narrows
dramatically.
> It has no storage devices whatsoever yet it contains inventory type
> data that has been entered into it over the period of the past 20
> years. The box hasn't been shut down since it was turned on before I
> was born so I would not want to take a risk of checking if it is Y2K
> compliant by rebooting it somehow.
Sounds like you're getting the story from a secretary, not someone who
actually knows about the system. Do some more checking. I can pretty
much guarantee you that A.) it has not been up for 20 years without
interruption; B.) it DOES have storage devices -- what, you think it
remembers things by magic?; C.) You probably wouldn't have a clue HOW to
reboot it. These things generally don't boot themselves when power is
applied.
Step 1: Identify the machine. Absolutely, positively, without question
you have got to do this. *Someone* there knows what it is, and if they
don't, look for serial number plates. Take a close look at the covers to
see how they come off, there will be information inside if you can find
it.
Who services and maintains the box? There's got to be a field engineer
who's babysat this antique. He'd be more than happy to tell you
everything you need to know. He of the toolkit and 'scope probably knows
as much about that box as the designer by now. Be persistent; there HAS
TO BE a field engineer. These boxes do NOT run unattended for 20 years,
trust me. I used to service IBM mainframes that dated back to the '60s.
If you're lucky, it's not a System/3... and I'd bet my house there's a
storage device or two. If it's a S/3, S/3[468] or something along those
lines, you may just not recognize that disk drive as a disk drive.
> What I want to do on the other hand, is to extract all the data that is
> in it via the printer port. Considering that it prints to a dot matrix
> printer it should be possible to get that data in some wird sequence of
> ASCII characters and hopefully decode the thread and put it into a nice
> SQL database. The printout looks like a easy to understand sequence of
> lines that seem to be separated into columns by <tab>. That is as far as
> I have gotten today.
Good approach, very workable with some thoughtful scripting. I've used it
before, long before Linux.
> My question. Is there a way I could capture the output that goes to the
> printer with a help of a Linux box? If so, what would be the best set up?
> I am not sure what kind of a port/protocol it uses but I have a feeling
> it is a standard Cetronics one. Any, even minor, assistance would be great.
Centronics? Possibly, but don't bet the farm on it. Find out first. If
it is, a parallel to serial converter and a null modem cable will get the
data to your Linux box where a few hours flogging it with Perl, TCL or
whatever and you look like a hero. Or something like that. Anyway,
parallel printers were not nearly as common as serial ones. A model
number from the printer would go a long way toward figuring this one out.
On non-IBM systems, serial Decwriters, TTY 43's, and a few others were
popular. If it's IBM I can identify it and the host system -- and your
job may get a lot easier, since you can get data from IBM machines
converted to friendlier formats commercially. Unless, of course, you
*enjoy* doing EBCDIC to ASCII conversion.
Dale
---
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
-- Isaac Asimov
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