Consolidated from: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Unix-Linux-OS-1064/2015/8/fun-old-point-4.htm
Expert: mkitwrk - 8/17/2015 (Larry Irwin)
Question (from Tim Plummer)
Not really a question just a comment. Being an old Point 4 VAR I search for Point 4 stuff under as many different search terms as I can. Over the years it had been fun to find the different people associated with Point 4. For example I have as Mark 12 board pinned to my wall. I look for stories from other that I find on the web and am curious about your history with Point 4.
Answer (Larry Irwin)
You might be Tim Carlson maybe???
I see your posts on LinkedIn quite often...
(Point 4 is a small world...)
I started with CCA Medical using IRIS 7 on the Mark V and Mark IX systems (around 1984).
(Even had a few DG RDOS systems to support at that time...)
Worked a lot with Dennis Peattie on tape/disk maneuvers to pack/unpack the LU's so they could be dropped onto new media at restore time (used removable disk-packs, then reel-to-reel tapes, then some of those weird trapezoidal shaped tapes, then 1/4 in tapes..).
Convinced CCA to switch from MiniCom to DTR, since we'd made many trips to install systems only to find that pieces (like cables for the disks) weren't shipped... DTR would also ship partially assembled and the parts were always there... Saved a lot.
Learned how to use DSP (mainly to fix timestamps on polyfiles), learned how to fix the "Office" product indices and learned how to greatly improve IRIS Basic code by forcing OOPS concepts into the design.
Worked for many years with Randall Wallace (Delta Data Systems). Still keep in touch with his son, Randy, in the DAKCS world.
When Xenix came out on the 286, we opted to use IMS Basic... But, after we saw the path they were taking, we converted to UniBasic/dL4.
And now we are completely on Linux, Apache, MySQL, dL4/dXport. (LAMd ???)
Parts of things have been migrated to php5 and we've written a bunch of web services that produce or consume xml/json content.
Eventually, we will probably move heavily into javascript/html5/php.
(depends on dollars as always... price gets too high, it justifies coding the switch...)
It's been averaging about 1 new language/process every year or 2 -- really keeps one on their toes!
The craziest Point 4 installation I ever did was at a site in Memphis... 1986, I think. The building wasn't completed... No A/C, no furniture, nothing but electricity and partitions - and we got a Mark V from Bob Runge (and it wasn't "new" like it was supposed to be...). - So, I had to work sitting on a 5 gallon bucket in 90 degree heat with the (overly heat sensitive) Mark V open on both ends and window fans blowing through to keep the boards cooled. Serial cables hanging all over the place... about 12 Wyse 60's and 4 or 5 Okidata printers...
But they were in trouble. Their old system's data had been mangled and it took the vendor too long to figure it out before the problem had been migrated to all their backup tapes... So - we stepped in, got what data we could with a tri-tail switch (remember those? I still have one...) in place of a serial printer and converted it. They're still with us - one of our best clients!
Hope all is well with you,
Questioner's Rating
Rating(1-10) Knowledgeability = 10 Clarity of Response = 10 Politeness = 10
Comment (Tim Plummer)
Got the first name right but the last is Plummer. I was a medical laboratory var servicing the Okc and D/FW area. Great to hear you still have a tri-tail switch. [I] used one one time to salvage a reconstruct on a Mark 8. We saved some data but lost much more it was a catastrophe. Point 4er being a small group but a loyal group it was great to hear your battle field adventures.
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Profile of mkitwrk (Larry Irwin)
Experience in the area
I've been head of development at our company since 1984. Our OS's at that time were Point 4's IRIS and Altos' Xenix. Then: SCO Xenix, SCO Unix, AIX, SCO-OS5, Caldera, RedHat 7, Debian Sarge, RedHat ES4, Debian Etch, Redhat ES5, Debian Lenny, RedHat ES6, Debian Squeeze. I've migrated our clients through those various versions with minimal interruption while preserving their investments in hardware and staff knowledge over time.
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Larry Irwin also made a very nice post/contribution at the bottom of our History page at
http://microtechm1.blogspot.com/p/history.html
Here's what he added:
May 11, 2016 at 9:49 AM
I first encountered RDOS systems in 1983. Followed quickly by IRIS systems, then Altos Xenix, SCO Xenix, SCO Unix, SCO OS5 - then Linux: Caldera, RedHat, Debian and now Ubuntu...
We only had RDOS on the Nova's - where the language boot vs. the OS IPL brought up the multi-user aspect.
We switched to Point4 IRIS systems and got them from Minicom and DTR for the most part. Got a few from Delta Data Systems as well. So we either had Minicom or MTCopy utilities to deal with for backup software and had QIC-24, magtape reels or those odd tapes shaped like a house (5 sides - think they were called MegaTapes) - Dennis Peattie and Chuck(?last name) were the DSP gurus who would help us deal with moving to new hardware -- pack the LU's, back them up to tape, boot from tape on new system, DSP a bit, restore to a new system, DSP a bit, re-boot from disk -- and voila!
We used DSP quite often to adjust the headers of polyfiles when they got out of sync causing them to not open when requested... screwed up the timestamps... mainly due to how sensitive the systems were to power fluctuations. - had to have in-line vs. stand-by if you wanted them to stay up in sketchy power situations... Also used it to recover things in Point4's Electronic Office System... ouch... :)
We still have our system logic for Practice Express written in dL4/dXport - the descendant of IRIS Basic (configured as a CGI) from Dynamic Concepts. So - we're now in a LAM[dXport] stack! Fully browser-based medical practice management system.
We're currently figuring the in's and out's of changing to a Single Page App (SPA) using a full LAMP stack with AngularJS, Bootstrap, et.al. in the toolset. (quite a change from working with Televideo and Wyse terminals on Mark 3/4/5/9/12 systems...)
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