User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't
On Call Welcome once more to On Call, the Friday column in which we share stories of tech support incidents that went pear-shaped until cunning Reg readers stepped in to save the day.
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Charles" who told us that last century he worked at what he called "The very large German bank."
"My job was architecting and writing programs that automated the network, connecting the bank's mainframe to terminals," Charles told On Call.
He was very good at that job and built a reputation as a go-to resource for anything to do with the bank's networks.
Which is why one day the bank's help desk called and asked for Charles because a user claimed to have a problem that had utterly confounded both first and second level support.
Charles called the user, who sounded quite upset because he was trying to edit a file but the screen of his terminal was blank.
"I asked him the ID number of his terminal and looked at what the network had to say about it," Charles told On Call. He learned that the terminal was running just fine, and that every piece of the network between the mainframe and the user was online and in good order. Charles could even see the user's editor session in the OS.
He therefore asked again if the user's screen was blank.
The user insisted their terminal displayed nothing but an expanse of black.
"That was strange because in those days the terminals had a status line at the bottom showing the machine ID, whether they are connected, what the cursor position is and other information," Charles told On Call. "This status line was always there. Always. The user said the screen was black. I checked again and again. We went through this for nearly half an hour. Nothing ever changed. I said everything looked fine and the user said the screen was pitch black."
Charles was stumped and at the point of giving up when he had an idea.
"I asked if any pixels were lit up on the screen, of any color. I told the user to start in the top left corner of the screen and tell me about every single lit-up pixel from there to the bottom right corner."
The user did as they were told and before long informed Charles that he had spotted some pixels at the bottom of the screen, and they were arranged into a sentence that read "HSM[some numbers] Recalling dataset... from tape..."
At this point, Charles realized four important pieces of knowledge.
One was that HSM stands for "Hierarchical Storage Manager," which meant the user's terminal was waiting to load a file from tape. The second was that not all of the bank's tapes were online, and that sometimes loading a file meant waiting for someone to physically locate the tape and insert it into a drive. The third was that the bank's tape operators weren't enthusiastic workers, so it was not uncommon for an hour or two to pass before anyone found a tape.
His last realization was that the HSM message had been on the user's screen throughout all of his interactions with level one support, level two support, and Charles.
"I took a deep breath, did my best to keep my composure, and explained the editor was waiting for the file to be loaded from tape and this was the reason why his screen was mostly black," Charles told On Call.
He then asked the user why he said the screen was blank when the HSM message was clearly visible.
The user responded by explaining the HSM message wasn't something he had seen before, or part of the editor's interface, so he decided it was nothing.
"I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'" Charles told On Call. "That was absolutely the most bizarre support call that I ever had to handle and I needed quite some time to get over it."
What's the most bizarre support call you've handled? And how did you get over it? If sharing your story will help your recovery, click here to send On Call an email so we can share your story on a future Friday. ®
