Comment by colinb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by colinb | Hacker News Reader

Story time. My first job out of college, working on the port of VMS from VAX to Alpha AXP. This was before it was renamed OpenVMS (Posix team in Italy!) and when Alpha was still a codename (possible alternates for final choice of product name included VAX-2000, and MondoVAX (still my favourite)).

I was assigned to port the Bad Block Detector (BADBLK? I don't remember exactly) to the 64 bit architecture. The 'port' turned out to be change the build files to use the correct compiler and flags. I don't remember if the tool was written in PL/1, Bliss or VAX assembler, but we had compilers (yes, even for VAX 32 bit assembler) for all of them. The interesting part was the testing.

A Bad Block Detector is a piece of software that watches for disk blocks going bad, and remaps them to spare capacity (your spinning rust disk is lying about its size - don't know if this is true for SSDs). It might even try to copy data from the failing blocks to the remapped space if there's time. More modern h/w does this in the firmware on the drive. It's transparent to the OS. Testing this behaviour is... challenging.

Recipe: Test the Bad Block Detector

Serves: millions

Time: A couple of hour elapsed

Ingredients:

- a VAXstation - i.e. a biggish desktop machine that can run Alpha emulation well enough for our purposes. All of its disks are connected on a SCSI bus.

- a 3.5inch floppy drive with a SCSI connection (yes, you read that right)

- a box of 3.5 inch disks

- a paperclip

Method:

Boot emulated environment. Set cross compiled Bad Block Detector running. It watches for 'interesting' disk related events.

Insert floppy disk. Note the Bad Block Detector does nothing (because disk has no bad blocks.)

Take paperclip in right hand.

Take fresh disk in left hand. With pinky finger, push back the sliding cover that protects the delicate rusty surface.

Using paperclip, gouge a few hundred kilobytes of damage into rusty surface.

Replace good disk with scratched disk.

Watch console for proof that Bad Block Detector woke up, spotted the badness, and remapped its little heart out.

Serve to delighted and amazed customers.

Loose billions of dollars, arrange purchase by Compaq, rinse, repeat.

In a not very big town in Northern Europe, I cycled past Digital Equipment offices on my way to school. They had such a huge work force all over the world, and sunk into the ocean almost without a trace.

You had to be the best of the Best to work for DEC —not a nerd-hipster (like the talented, but not trained or experienced techies at Apple and Microsoft). Apple and Microsoft were all over us trying to get us to quit DEC by falling for their limos and food courts (our CEO drove a Pinto and we wore suits because it neutralized people coming from different backgrounds as being equal, so we could truly work together regardless of our socioeconomic background, not because we were jerks like LSD-dropping Steve Jobs, who was off screwing Japanese investors out of $100 million in 1989s money with in his magnesium Cube at the time). A couple things happened to change it all, but the gist of it is that Dave Cutler finally cracked and defected to Microsoft (he’s the Ace of Aces behind all major DEC systems from 1970s forward and now behind NT and Azure) and the DEC boardroom was anxious about Intel having appropriated DEC’s revolutionary RISC processor tech that would go on to give us the last 35 years of the otherwise dead X86 tech that was cheaper because it was being sold in high volume by an army of PC clone makers. First the Board sold DEC’s Hudson division that made the groundbreaking Alpha and StrongARM chips to Intel (as a settlement), and then they sold DEC itself. There is a lot more to the story, but that’s pretty much the bottom line. What happened to the people? Cutler took many, when Google and Amazon became a thing, they tracked some or us down (including YouTube founders) and took some. The vast majority were sent to the benches (permanently). I heard a rumor that DEC’s then youngest senior level worker ever today hangs out on here sometimes and has a reputation of like 11 because truth sort of conflicts badly with all the crap that bloggers wrote for the current generation over the past 35 years. You see, those bloggers were maybe computer store (like shoe store) salesmen, but probably were just slightly smart school children when all of that reality was goin’ on. RIP Ken Olsen. FU Dave Cutler.

You seem bitter. Maybe you should grow out of this weird believe system that only hard-core techies are worth their salt or something. The world works different than you want, which seems to frustrate you greatly. Maybe accept it and be a bit happier?

Posting a salty anecdote of loss and missed opportunity from the early (presumably) days of ones career doesn't necessarily mean someone is bitter in general.

Fair point, but inferring from a comment or two that someone must use the wrong brand of paper towels at home and then constructing an ad hominem around that is the true soul of HN discourse.

sure, but the tone sounds if OP has not moved on. Why be so angry after all these years?

I think the bitterness (mostly) in in jest, to add flavor to the story.

One of the primary uses for computer technology today is displaying ads at any cost to society. This isn't what those who worked in the field in the early days envisioned. You can't blame them for being mad about it. I wasn't even there and I'm mad about it.

Maybe one day you'll post an anecdote as interesting

> sold DEC’s Hudson division [...] to Intel

Intel is having a heck of a time now getting rid of that campus in Hudson. They're trying to sell it to Portman Industrial, who want to redevelop it as a warehouse and trucking facility. But folks at the abutting senior living developments have put up a huge stink, suing Intel and the town and picketing on the street outside the location.

I worked with an ex-DEC guy up in Nashua NH, and even he knew that DEC screwed up big time by being too engineering driven. The NIH was so strong there that they made their own in-wall receptacles (probably apocryphal).

Bob apparently hired Bricklin (the visicalc guy) at DEC. Hi bob if you're out there!

But yes, Windows NT was basically a DEC product. Cutler probably left because he knew DEC was dead. DEC: the brain was dead, but the body lived on.

DEC showed how long a company could survive on inertia alone.

> don't know if this is true for SSDs

It is, but it is handled in firmware now, just like in newer HDDs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com