Mongoose 1 on CD?

[TamsinP]

or maybe a robotics technician on the Enterprise

 

[aramis]

Datamedic sounds to me like a data recovery service. Which I suspect strongly it is. That it would be anything else didn't hit me until the other impressions were read.

 

[kilemall]

Datamedic sounds to me like a data recovery service. Which I suspect strongly it is. That it would be anything else didn't hit me until the other impressions were read.

There are DR services with that brand name, but he mentioned cute nurses which generally speaking aren’t anywhere near such, more likely actual clinical practice.

The big floppy dates the story to dawn of PCs or before.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Datamedic? Don’t know that one but sounds like late 70s/early 80s report generator stuff, big floppies like that were usually what we now call boot disks.

In the late 1980's/1990s they were a firm that bought a Mainframe out on eastern Long Island in New York
They hit on the model of getting Medical offices to sign on to a service where:
1) They'd sell the medical offices a hardware/software kit with a system that ran their offices(patient records/appointment schedules, etc)
2) They would then connect to each office's system at midnight and collect the data so they could compile reports and produce schedules, etc
3) In each region they sold their services to, they hired a Field Service tech...and I was the North Jersey tech

 

[kilemall]

In the late 1980's/1990s they were a firm that bought a Mainframe out on eastern Long Island in New York
They hit on the model of getting Medical offices to sign on to a service where:
1) They'd sell the medical offices a hardware/software kit with a system that ran their offices(patient records/appointment schedules, etc)
2) They would then connect to each office's system at midnight and collect the data so they could compile reports and produce schedules, etc
3) In each region they sold their services to, they hired a Field Service tech...and I was the North Jersey tech

Ok so given state of the art then, some sort of terminal entry, a local server/concentrator that supported the local terminals/printers and connected to the mainframe?

Sounds almost like a repurposed hospital system- wouldn’t happen to be NCR based?

 

[Commander Truestar]

Ok so given state of the art then, some sort of terminal entry, a local server/concentrator that supported the local terminals/printers and connected to the mainframe?

Sounds almost like a repurposed hospital system- wouldn’t happen to be NCR based?

LOL, no
It is a sad thing that many people in today's world can't see the world the way older folk can and assume models based only on things they can imagine.

Back in the 1970's, when computers were HUGE, bulky and expensive, having some kind of dedicated communications line to someone who had one was the only way many could computerize.

When a business office, in this case - a medical practice looked at computers, they were too expensive for the organization to consider.
Especially when they'd been doing business with hand-written data and paper storage for years. Why do we need a computer to do what we
already do?

But, there were advantages to using a computer if the reporting and "practice management" tools were well written and provided advantages.

And, if your software was as good as you said, the "actual expense" of a centralized software system handling the management after making an
"over the web" call to upload the data from "elsewhere" was actually very inexpensive.

But, your potential customers don't want to pay for desk top computers to put in their office....especially when IBM was selling PS2 models for
as much as $5,000 "each"

So, you sell a service which offers PS2 model computers, and then make the potential client "think" that service is expensive, but beneficial.
Then, you offer the PS2's up as either free or cheap based on the subscription purchased.

That "sales trick" lures them in and locks them into a contract.

At the same time, many corporations were also tying their "outer sites" to a single mainframe because they didn't want to spend millions
of dollars to create a number of local computing centers.

So, it was not uncommon for all corporate computing to be done via telephone modem to a central mainframe.

Usenet, which eventually led to the world wide web, also was based on the centralized mainframes of government and educational
organizations.
When I first learned BASIC and FORTRAN, it was in High School, on a teletype which had a dedicated line to the mainframe of a local
college which rented time to us. This was because there was no way the high school could afford the amazingly overpriced IBM PC, AT or XT
of the day in numbers which allowed them to offer such a class

So, while you may not be able to envision that environment, I grew up in it only 40 or so years ago

 

[kilemall]

LOL, no
It is a sad thing that many people in today's world can't see the world the way older folk can and assume models based only on things they can imagine.

Back in the 1970's, when computers were HUGE, bulky and expensive, having some kind of dedicated communications line to someone who had one was the only way many could computerize.

When a business office, in this case - a medical practice looked at computers, they were too expensive for the organization to consider.
Especially when they'd been doing business with hand-written data and paper storage for years. Why do we need a computer to do what we
already do?

But, there were advantages to using a computer if the reporting and "practice management" tools were well written and provided advantages.

And, if your software was as good as you said, the "actual expense" of a centralized software system handling the management after making an
"over the web" call to upload the data from "elsewhere" was actually very inexpensive.

But, your potential customers don't want to pay for desk top computers to put in their office....especially when IBM was selling PS2 models for
as much as $5,000 "each"

So, you sell a service which offers PS2 model computers, and then make the potential client "think" that service is expensive, but beneficial.
Then, you offer the PS2's up as either free or cheap based on the subscription purchased.

That "sales trick" lures them in and locks them into a contract.

At the same time, many corporations were also tying their "outer sites" to a single mainframe because they didn't want to spend millions
of dollars to create a number of local computing centers.

So, it was not uncommon for all corporate computing to be done via telephone modem to a central mainframe.

Usenet, which eventually led to the world wide web, also was based on the centralized mainframes of government and educational
organizations.
When I first learned BASIC and FORTRAN, it was in High School, on a teletype which had a dedicated line to the mainframe of a local
college which rented time to us. This was because there was no way the high school could afford the amazingly overpriced IBM PC, AT or XT
of the day in numbers which allowed them to offer such a class

So, while you may not be able to envision that environment, I grew up in it only 40 or so years ago

I worked in that environment in that time.

I used such floppies professionally to boot up mainframes.

Note I used the word terminals, which means something very specific. A concentrator is also a very specific piece of datacomm equipment relevant to that time and hooked into terminals to communicate with mainframes.

Since you talked upload and midnight processing, that is very much like hospital day end batch processing which continues to this day with major software packages.

So no I don’t have to imagine it, I lived it. And continue to.

Likely the PS2 would have been programmed to emulate a terminal, or if it was uploading files that could be custom software but kind of risky given the flakiness of the equipment.