It has been a while since I've brought to you the tales of woe from my past... But this one isn't a tale of woe for myself, it was some other poor bugger who had to suffer, though I was involved.
After my first in-depth IT related job, I got into looking after some big systems, and I mean so Big they could have starred Tom Hanks... The last one of which ended, officially in early 2001, this was my looking after an IBM AS400 machine.
It had several terminals hooked into it, many suited analysts (as the non-programmers were called) regally sipped coffee and generated reports from it, there were also several ASCII Serial wireless hand-held terminals for roaming about the site with, all pretty cool. I however was not involved in any of this, my job was to look after the PC's on the site and keep the AS400 fed with back-up tapes.
One of the PC's however took me within a solar breath of the chorona of glory that was working with the BIG IRON, and this was a little IBM PC, running OS/2 which was used actually boot the AS400, the mechanism escapes me, the details I've long forgotten, I remember it using OS/2, a terminal and a fancy script.
As I said this role ended for me in 2001, and I whisked my way off to work for a little software shop in Alcester, Warwickshhire (where I know I was a lazy pain in the arse - sorry about that lads - I grew up later, honest!). Anyway, 23rd December 2001, I had a call at my parents home, a chap asking for me by name. They handed out my personal mobile (Rocking the Nokia 3310 on Genie Mobile).
Well, this guy didn't let up, Christmas Eve, I'm mid-way through watching the Muppet Christmas Carol for the fifth time that day, and I finally look at the phone, and the seventeen texts to call the head-office of my prior employer.
Which I do, and awake a security guard whom had less hold of English than my dog, and the dog's Greek...
After a mixed conversation, I got through to a chap who was clearly in a server room, you could hear the noise behind him, I love that noise.
As he's talking to me however, the noise disappeared, dead silent...
"Did you just leave the server room?"
His reply.. "No, it just shuts off, it never completes its boot".
He was talking about the AS400, of which I knew nothing, they had very expensive IBM support for it on the way, but they were very worried, and wanted me to take a look, as everything had to be up for the Boxing Day sales - this was my time not in a manufacturing world, but in a retail world - the pressure was real, the target was live.
On the offer of a very nice cash sum, I jumped in my 206 and drove down to the offices, waved through security I signed in, and took a look around my old stomping ground, things had changed since I was last there, the partitioning wall to the server room had been removed, where the analysts sat was now occupied by a modern style series of server rack positions, they were in the process of moving everything to a set of Dell Power Edge 2U servers, with A/C, a hot isle and a cold, some decent kit.
Turning around there was the great big AS400, jet black, with a rectangular base rounded at one end. And the machine perched on this raised platform.
This was the machine which would not booting... The problem?
Well, that paritioning wall, which had been removed... "How did you remove this wall?"
"Oh" he said "we had them put plastic sheets double lined from the ceiling to floor, took down the stud walling, and clean up, we never had to turn the AS400 off"
"Fabulous" I noted his pride "so the silver racks which were here, the shelving with parts and the little PC sat about here" I intimated the corner just below waist height.
"All that was removed, with the wall, just old junk parts and pieces"
"Okay" I look around "So where did you remove it all to?"
"A skip" he shrugged "About three months ago"
"Aha" I nodded "I know your problem, the AS400 is coming up into advisory mode and awaiting the start signals from the script host, I'm going to guess you don't run AS400 elsewhere, you're winding down to the new servers?"
"Yeah" he was quite flustered "I know nothing about this hunk of junk, I just need it to work"
"Then you need to find a PC running OS/2 before morning, and restore from one of the back-ups I used to take onto tape, if you can"
He went whiter than my best linen on wash day... "OS2 PC? Why?"
"Because the machine which sat here, was the boot master for the main shell into the Analysts layer, it sat here" indicating the wall again "whoever unplugged and threw it in a skip should really have looked a the holistic picture, it was a very important little machine, which is why we had two of them and spare parts on those shelves, and why it also got backed up to tape when it was installed or updates performed on it"
Silence filled the gap.
"I'll take that cash and get back to my Christmas pudding".
