from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
scratch monkey
monkey, scratch
<humour> As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount
a {scratch monkey}", a proverb used to advise caution when
dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to
any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky
operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data
that might otherwise get trashed.
This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder
Monkey, star of a biological research program at the
University of Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes)
your ordinary monkey; the university had spent years teaching
her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to
study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology.
Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when a DEC engineer
troubleshooting a crash on the program's VAX inadvertently
interfered with some custom hardware that was wired to Mabel.
It is reported that, after calming down an understandably
irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the
matter, a DEC troubleshooter called up the {field circus}
manager responsible and asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?"
Not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop
of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the
behest of certain clueless droids at the local "humane"
society. The moral is clear: When in doubt, always mount a
scratch monkey.
{ESR} notes: There is a version of this story, complete with
reported dialogue between one of the project people and DEC
field service, that has been circulating on Internet since
1986. It is hilarious and mythic, but gets some facts wrong.
For example, it reports the machine as a {PDP-11} and alleges
that Mabel's demise occurred when DEC {PM}ed the machine.
Earlier versions of this entry were based on that story; this
one has been corrected from an interview with the hapless
sysop.
A corespondent adds: The details you give are somewhat
consistent with the version I recall from the Digital "War
Stories" notesfile, but the name "Mabel" and the swimming bit
were not mentioned, IIRC. Also, there's a very detailed
account (http://mv.com/ipusers/arcade/monkey.htm) that
claims that three monkies died in the incident, not just one.
I believe Eric Postpischil wrote the original story at DEC, so
his coming back with a different version leads me to wonder
whether there ever was a real Scratch Monkey incident.
[{Jargon File}]
(2004-08-22)