My Computing - 7

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Now that you are armed with Prof KV's Fortran II program for finding the principal values and locating the principal axes of the crystal field gradient tensor, you feel 'empowered' and ask him before leaving how much time IBM 1620 would need to do this entire calculation and when he says: "Not more than 10 minutes," you marvel...a 3-month hard labor with your Facit machine is compressed to just 10 minutes!!!

And walk to the CISS Building...remember your new Avon pushbike was stolen, the next day you bought it, from the Gokhale Hall Mess. And go to the backdoor where you were told you would find a very soft-spoken and naram boy (BB) working as Assistant to his garam Boss...Nature's way of compensating...thinking he would take your handwritten PT sheet and give you your results in 10 minutes...

Ha!!!!!!

He would smile at you and ask you to get a 'Work-Order' form signed by your HoD, HNB. And you would trek back and ask Ghoshal Babu (who loves you because you are also a deserving Brahmin) for a work-order form. He would tell you that only the Central Workshop in the Hangar, half a kilometer away, is empowered to stock work-order forms. Another long trek and the man behind the Counter there looks at you suspiciously because he never saw your face so far (he will see it infinitely oftener by and by) and ask: "What for?" His face reminds you of the Clerk behind the Counter at the Post Office when you ask for that (dried-up) gum pot. After some supplication, he would place just one form, with columns to be filled in on both sides, in your hands. HNB is kind and would sign it proudly.

The next day you take it to the CISS and meet BB hoping that your travails are over. He asks you to push it into the (ballot) box with a slot, and advise you that you will duly get a letter informing you of the date and time slots allotted to you and warn you not to miss it. After a week you get the letter that you are to report at CISS at 2 PM next but one Friday. You go there and BB would let you in and ask you to wait for a free "punching machine", all of which are busy with sundry Research Scholars punching with their fingers madly away. That would remind you of waiting for a vacant table after you 'cut' your lunch coupon in the Ajanta Hotel of Vizagh.

You ask BB what to do with the damn machine. He would tell you to insert a deck of (post) cards on each of which are rows and rows of 0 and 1s. And you start 'typing' your program line by line on each subsequent card. The machine, you will understand, translates your alphanumerics into ASCII binary codes. You are amazed that it is so simple.

You now have a deck of say 30 cards with holes at appropriate places. And ask BB: "Now what?" He would ask you to wait for your turn for 'precompilation'. You await your turn and BB inserts your deck into the IN box of the glorious IBM 1620 and press: 'precompile'. The cards would fall down at an alarming rate till it gets stuck at the 19th card and the red bulb glows. BB would retract your deck and ask you to correct the typing mistake you made in the punching machine in the 19th card (only, hopefully). You go back to the end of the new queue and await your turn.

And stand at the end of another line of precompilers. And this time, if you are lucky with it, BB would press: "Compile." Now the cards would fall more slowly and agonizingly one by one, and BB tells you that the think-tank is reading your cards and converting your Fortran II into Machine Language (Assembly Language). Since your program was written by Prof KV, the green bulb glows saying the program is ok and 'executable'. The Research Scholars standing ahead of you would get abusive 'feedback' from the think-tank (ALU) saying there are at least 15 errors with 'error codes' supplied by it courteously...like the list of error codes behind our SBH ATM in Khairatabad.

Remember that all the while the think-tank is 'executing' someone else's program that crossed all the hurdles (so far). Often, the concerned Research Scholar would be biting his nails, because there is every chance that the 'Check Stop' Red Bulb on the console would glow and the machine stops whirring. Then the Boss would come and pick up the card deck of the poor chap and throw it on his face and say: "GET OUT" for wasting the precious time of his gizmo...Check Stop, I am told, is due to the fault of the machine...it can't find the missing 'address' to which a piece of the computed result has to be forwarded. The 1620 is a bum and its compiler is not intelligent enough to spot some internal mistakes in the flowchart or whatever...

You are lucky and at the end of the promised ten minutes, all the green bulbs on the console will glow saying it has done its job and is ready to send the result to the 'output' end. You are generally advised to write: "PUNCH" at the end of your program and not: "PRINT", because the built-in Printer is expensive and only favorites of the Boss are allowed to do it.

You will then find that from the Output Slot a few cards would fall down. BB would pick them up and hand them over to you and ask you to go the "Inverse-Puncher" which would convert the ASCII binary codes into plain English...Huh!!!

You thank BB and stare proudly at the Boss and quit and celebrate...your (friend's) results are ready: the principal values are 2.3, 2.3, and 4.2 and the axes are at 31 deg azimuth and 42 deg colatitude (or whatever) of his (idiotically) chosen XYZ axes.

You then convey the result of his computations to your friend at AU, Vizagh, thinking that you would get a warm ThanQ Card for saving him the labor of 3 grueling months.

But Life is Never Like That!

He would write saying that, while he is happy with the results you sent him, he became more ambitious meanwhile and wants to beat all his competitors by computing the results for the 2000 nearest neighbors instead of the default 200; knowing that with their Facit Machines they would take 2 years to do the manual calculations and he would thus be ONE UP; "Won't you please...don't forget that I lent you Rs 20 one good old weekend when you were awaiting the Money Order from your Father"

You say, OK, since it means only changing one line of the program...in the DO loop instruction just change the numbers.

Back to the Work Order.

Now, however, instead of adding a decimal or two to the significant figures with 200 neighbors, the IBM 1620, who is not easily cheated, would give the new results:

3.1 (in place of 2.3) and 2.4 (in place of 4.2) and 16 deg (in place of 31 deg) and 24 deg (in place of 42 deg).

You inform and advise your friend not to become even more ambitious and ask for 20000 neighbors because the series unfortunately doesn't feel like converging anywhere nearby; and so hurry up and submit his thesis before they find it out...

Don't blame good old IBM 1620 whose motto remains:

"Input BS...Output BS" (BS for Bullshit)


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