Phoning It In
by in Feature Articles on 2008-01-29In the late 1980s, Andrew Harkavy was working as a lead developer for a large hotel chain. He was responsible for 240 hotels that ran off 4 regional minicomputers. Each minicomputer served around 60 hotels, with six ports designated for each one for its terminals, printers, IT dial-in support, etc. Most of the time things worked pretty well, though the hardware was being pushed to the limit.
One day, Andrew got a call from a hotel employee with a strange issue — the screen's output kept coming out of the printer. Some time later, Andrew got another call from the same hotel employee, this time it was print jobs being output to the screen.