MacIvory Gotcha!

["P. T. Withington" <PTW%jasper.scrc.symbolics.com@RELAY.CS.NET>]

    Date: Fri, 13 OCT 89 18:34:27 PDT 
    From: PARK@CRVAX.SRI.COM (William Park)

    After  spending  over an hour reading tape 1 of 2 of the Genera software
    into my new MacIvory, the Breath of Life program asked me if I had  tape
    #2  loaded  up.   Unfortunately,  I  was  out  of  the room at the time,
    attending to a call of nature.  The BOL waited a decent interval,  timed
    out,  then  decided  that  that idiotic piece of meatware out there must
    surely have loaded the next tape by now.  Apparently, it answered itself
    "Yes," read its own answer, then began to read tape #1 again.

There is no timeout -- I've successfully forgotten I was doing a restore
and come back a day later to put in the second tape.  Maybe someone sat
on you keyboard while you were out? 

    The  results  were  rather  less  successful  than  I  would have wished
    ("unknown arithmetic trap #0200").

I'll be a nice guy and note that as a bug (even though you sent it to
the wrong list).

    Some wags with no respect for the challenges to be met in person-machine
    interface programming have recommended that I have a toilet installed in
    front of the MacIvory if I intend to continue doing system  maintenance.
    Can  anyone  suggest  a  more  elegant solution to the BOL's unfortunate
    default behavior?  Preferably one that does not require a plumber.

    Does Tom Peters know about the software industry?

    Bill Park