YADS - Yet Another DECtape Story - (nf)

[mbr at fortune.UUCP]

#R:sri-arpa:-1607600:fortune:26900027:000:781
fortune!mbr    Feb 17 17:29:00 1984

Sorry about the last message.  I accidentally sent out a copy of the base note.

Many moons ago, I worked on a multi-user basic interpreter for the PDP-11,
whose main I/O device was dectape.  We had a newly written device driver for
it, and left some tests running overnight.  Big mistake!  We had forgotten to
put an upper limit on the number of error recovery attempts.  The next morning,
we found that the dectape had been seeking back and forth over a bad block the
entire night!  The magnetic emulsion on that portion of the tape was completely
worn away.  The drive head was visible through the now clear backing of the
tape, and was it ever HOT!!!!!


		{allegra,amd70,cbosgd,dsd,dual,
		 harpo,hpda,ihnp4,megatest,nsc,
		 oliveb,sri-unix,twg,varian,VisiA,wdl1}!fortune!mbr