The Control Data 6400 (CDC 6400) (part 2)

Anecdote: miniskirt problem

Because computers were a "hype" and very interesting at that time, one of the (only limited number) of secretaries really wanted to become a "computer operator". After a short course, she worked half-days as an operator. Being young and following the latest fashion, she liked to wear miniskirts. The, in that time mainly male, Laboratory workers, including many military at the laboratory stationed people, like that too....
It turned out that the removal of paper from a line printer is ergonomically a less obvious task for someone wearing a miniskirt. To decrease the fast growing "social meeting" at the input-/output desk, a fast decision was taken to turn the line printer 90 degrees in order to reduce the "view" for the laboratory personnel. That her co-workers, the operators and system programmers, got 'better working condition' at the same time was something that she never noticed.

System software

The Laboratory had made the choise for the 63-character set, like nearly all of its college computer centers in The Netherlands. In the US, Control Data only tested NOS/BE in the 64 character set mode. Obviously, programmers overlooked the 63-character set particularities. Thus less good developed code or code by "new" programmers resulted in not-working modules or compilers at almost each new release. We, at the Physics Laboratory corrected these problems and made each time a lot of noise about the failures in coding practice. Problems were reported using the Problem Reporting System-mechanism (PSR). With a two week interval, a set of microfiches arrived that included all reported problems - and solutions - collected throughout the world. With each release level, the system programmers anxiously waited a couple of weeks for the microfiches in order to figure out whether we set the mark with the new problems found or that our collegue of the University of Arizona had beated us with testing the new release....

The software problems as reported by the Laboratory (site code PLTN).

Apart from correction code for system errors, many additional feature code was developed. Much coding effort went into developments that eased the work of the console operator. As the standard NOS/BE operating system sometimes required information displayed at two or three screens, we tried to depict all required information on one single screen. Just to avoid typing errors, most commands that required the full job name of seven characters were replaced by commands that required the two or three digit "ordinal" number instead. In other cases, we supplied automatically the remaining characters. In this aspect, the Laboratory was years ahead of what we call nowadays an ergonomic workplace.

Anecdote: "The Director received a strange letter.."

"General, this list says ‘K..T", as you can see." The Director of the Physics Laboratory was then surprised by a letter of the General stating his thanks for the "real random tri-gram list (!)", but "could it be less random next time?". Explicitly, the General stated which three-letter words like "k..t" and "l..l" had to be removed from the list next time. Probably, this has been the only letter to TNO ever stating dirty words!
Of course, it bacame a sport for the programmer to generate lists with other "offensive" tri-grams for his "customers", the soldiers!