[TUHS] History repeating itself (was: Unix v6 problem with /tmp)

[Rudi Blom]

My 'incident' was around 1985 if I remember correctly. A time people
and border guards started to realise the possible value of what was on
such funny things like diskettes. Also I crossed 'National' borders.
Now that can be tricky even today :-)


On 01/08/2016, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
>
> I carried an RK05 disk full of proprietary software from West Orange NJ
> to a client in Kansas City back in 1977.  Airport security existed, but
> it wasn't as anal it is today.  So when I told them they couldn't X-ray
> the disk, it might scramble it, they wanted to do a physical inspection --
> but I told them if they opened the disk they'd get dust in it and ruin it.
> Finally they took my word for it.
>
> When the disk got to the client's, it was completely scrambled anyway.
> I went back home, and next week my partner went out with a stack of 5.25s.
> It took him twenty hours to set up the client's system (I don't remember
> if it was a PDP-8 or a PDP-11), but the job got done.
>