6 Feb
2020
6 Feb
'20
4:20 a.m.
On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, Harald Arnesen wrote:
Norsk Data's OS Sintran was the same, except that
"COLD-START" (reboot
the OS) was defined twice, so you had to spell it out in full.
CDC's KRONOS also allowed abbreviated commands; I grew quite fond of
typing "COMMO" for "COMMON" (attach to the system's common area)
and "POO"
for "POOL" (can't remember what that does, and my books are long gone).
Cough cough... The above sequence was how you broke into KRONOS:
COMMON SYSTEM
POOL SYSTEM
(quickly interrupt it)
Get the timing right, and you were in supervisor mode (or whatever it was
called). I remember when I was in the terminal room happily hacking away,
when the shift supervisor and the centre manager happened to walk in,
exclaiming "Security is pffft!". Terrified, I casually leaned over the
Duckwriter pretending to look for something, to obscure just what I'd been
typing...
I dimly recall that you could log off other users by (somehow) sending
a ^D to their terminal, but I could be confusing that with something
else (this was decades ago).
-- Dave