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Lauren Weinstein @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
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Greetings. Once upon a time long ago, I was sitting alone in the UCLA ARPANET
site #1 computer room late one night when the high Santa Ana winds outside
started disrupting power. Hit after hit, very dangerous for the minicomputers,
disk drives, and other equipment in that room, since we didn't have
uninterruptible power supplies back then.

I made some calls and it was decided I should shut everything in the room down.
Everything. I phoned the ARPANET NOC (Network Operations Center) at BBN and
explained the situation, since I was about to shut down IMP #1 (essentially, a
refrigerator-sized router) on ARPANET which sat in a corner of the room, and
doing this could cause disruptions if done in an unplanned manner. The IMP was
*always* running -- I had never seen it powered down.

I worked my way around the room, powering down terminals and disks, and
printers, and the power supplies on the 11/45 (ARPANET Host #1 - UCLA-ATS) and
the 11/70 (Host #129 [1+128 on IMP #1] - UCLA-SECURITY. Back then my email
addresses were LAUREN@UCLA-ATS and LAUREN@UCLA-SECURITY -- no domains yet.

The usual roar of the many machines' fans and motors gradually got quieter and
quieter, until only the IMP was left. I pulled down the power switch. Now there
was dead silence except the hum of the lights, a situation I'd never experienced
in that room before. Very odd feeling.

Suddenly I heard a click -- the IMP was powering back up by itself. Damn. I
pulled down the switch again. Quiet for a time, then click and it came back up
yet again. Before I started thinking about screwing around with its power cables
or turning off breakers that could have unexpected effects, I called the NOC
again to ask them if they had any ideas.

"Oh yeah. We should have told you! There's a little switch that controls
auto-restart. Surprise!"

So I found and flipped that little toggle switch, powered down the IMP again,
and this time it stayed down. I had turned off the ARPANET -- at least at UCLA.
-L

28. Dezember 2022 um 01:03 · Bearbeitet 28. Dezember 2022 um 01:08 · · 75 ·
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