If I had an "old 9-track tape drive" icon I'd be using it here.

[damont]

Last night at the office I discovered that a particular baseline for some code I needed (which is maintained by someone other than my employer) is borken. In several places. And of course I found this out the hard way, including fixing several of the borken things, which is why I didn't get home until after midnight. And it *still* wouldn't compile after all that.

Today, in addition to Adventures In Code Compiling, we are Frankensteining something together at the office, for which we needed a terminal. Or something like it. I was asked if I had any spare parts I could lend to the effort. Thus, today I brought in from my house:

- One ADDS Viewpoint terminal, complete with the College of William and Mary inventory sticker I placed on it 20-odd years ago, after I wrote the program to print said inventory stickers. (I bought the terminal for a dollar at a surplus auction many years later.)
- One Hayes-compatible modem just to see if the terminal would connect to it, as a test.
- A ratsnest of old serial cables.
- One RS232 black box about 20 years old, which can serve as a gender bender and signal splitter, with options for straight-through or null-modem signal passing.

The terminal appears to be malfunctioning. Sigh. Well, I do have several others I can try. In the meantime, we *have* managed to string the serial cables and black box together in a sequence that allows us to use a laptop (with appropriate software) as a serial terminal.

Comments

[kellan_the_tabby]

...dude.

You did _what_ with your _what_?

Also, borken *giggles madly*

[montuos]

(Paraphrased from the mists of faded memory)
"Besides, nine track magtape was fun to say. Try it! 'Nine track magtape!'"
  — Kaptain Kludge

...or null-modem signal passing.

Ah, so it did work for nullmodem! Good! :)

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I'd still like to know where the rest of the random compu-connection bits have gotten to. I'm fairly certain they didn't go to storage.

[adelheid-p.livejournal.com]

I might say something about terminal ADD. . . but I won't

[stefsoap.livejournal.com]

http://www.cpuinc.com/images/qualstar_3400_9-track_tape_drive.jpg

Yay! for re-using, re-cycling and re-furbishing!