Subj : Re: Anyone Uses Freedos?
To   : MARY4
From : MIKE POWELL
Date : Wed Jul 03 2024 07:35:00

³ kermit? dosapp?? sneakernet?
ÀÄ[M=>BC]
 
sneakernet was a term used to describe computers that were "networked"
together by someone carrying a floppy drive from computer A to computer B.
The "sneaker" in sneakernet refers to the shoes that the person carrying
the floppy might be wearing.  ;)
 
1994-96, I worked at a plant that used PCs for data entry (they may have
been 286s!), a PC that ran a "Baby-36" environment on top of DOS 5.0,
another stand-alone PC that ran a custom number-crunching application on
top of DOS, and an AS-400.
 
The data entry PCs were networked together (via I assume ethernet) so that
one data entry clerk could verify the work of another.  Once the data was
entered and verified, it was written to 3.5 floppy and sneakernetted to
either the Baby-36 or the AS-400 for processing.
 
Data between the Baby-36 and the AS-400 was also sneakernetted, as was data
to/from the "number-crunching" PC to the Baby-36 and the AS-400.
 
Sneakernetting has some advantages... like not needing to figure out how to
get mostly uncompatable systems networked together... but there was always
the risk of a floppy going bad.
 
Now, why they didn't try to get the custom program ported from the
"number-crunching" PC to the more efficient AS-400 I will never know.  All
I can figure was that it was proprietary and probably no longer supported.
Data entring info into that PC was done by one person, so it was not verified,
and was tedious.  Most of it was done by someone in data processing -- me --
and not the faster, more accurate data entry clerks.
 
It would spend hours crunching, and you'd likely not know you'd made an
error until the data had already been processed through one of the other
two systems, the Baby 36 or AS-400, and had been reflected on a report that
a member of management had looked at the next morning.
 
It had to be done all over again, from scratch.  Unlike on the data entry
network, batches keyed into that abysmal machine could not be reopened for
correction.  IIRC, you even had to restore everything from a backup first
before starting over.
 
I was glad I got laid off from that job.  ;)
 
Mike
 
##Mmr 2.61á.  !link M  7-03-24  2:26 
---
 þ BgNet 1.0á12 ÷ moe's tavern * 1-502-875-8938 * moetiki.ddns.net:27
 * Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (21:1/175)

.