what about 48 bits?

Wed Apr 7 15:06:41 UTC 2010

> This reminds of me of the failure-mode-within-a-failure-mode of 10b2
> with vaxstation2000's using vms's vaxcluster software. Unplugging the
> 10b2 gave you a window of about 10 seconds before one by one every
> vaxstation2000 would bugcheck. I was always rather astonished that
> nobody at DEC either noticed it, or thought it was a very big deal
> because the bug survived a long time.

I thought that was just me.  My first IT job was developing credit-card systems on VAXen.  We had the office flood-wired with 10base2 in one long bus - at locations where there wasn't a PC yet, there was just a faceplace with two BNC connectors, and a tiny patch lead between them.

To install a new PC, you had to have a length of co-ax long enough to go from the faceplate to the desk and back, with a T-piece in the middle.  Installation involved whipping out the short patch lead and re-connecting both ends of the longer one before things elsewhere declared the network as broken and started shutting down somewhat ungracefully.  This was best done as a two-man job, but we did get it down to quite an art.

Nice to know after all this time that someone else was playing the same silly game...

Regards,
Tim.