27 Nov
2022
27 Nov
'22
10:11 p.m.
. But everyone knew what the J stood for. The 3B2
served as a doorstop.
Shades of the jerq terminal. The J prefix persiste in the code long
after the nickname was quashed.
Being in charge of the Rutgers computer center, we were gifted a lot of
ATT hardware. We had one 3B20 (now that was a pure piece of phone
equipment, you shut it down by turning a switch inside and holding the
button down until it twanged. Just like putting an old 303 modem into
loop back). We also got three 3B5's (noted for the one installed in
the New Brunswick computing room that got completely drenched when a
pipe burst and kept on running) and countless of the 3B2s. I chortled
in that unless you were logged in as root, you couldn't work the power
switch. Yanking the cord out of the wall was still and option.