No one liked VSAM. However, COBOL programmers thought this button was a compliment! Button 287 AND 45 AND 150 AND 3 more: Tom McSloy created several buttons for distribution at Guide around 1975 when we were working for Gary Guth and Cy Mead IV at Rust-Oleum Corporation then headquartered in Evanston, IL. Tom left RO around 1977 and later worked for IBM. I left RO shortly after Tom. We both attended Guide and Share regularly for many years. The "VSAM is the COBOL of Access Methods" slogan was my idea and Tom created the buttons. At that time VSAM was causing us significant pain at RO. RO was a PL/I and BAL (NO COBOL) DOS (s/360) shop with NO tape drives (very modern). We were early adopters of CICS on s/360 and s/370. Our small tight-knit shop was a beta site for the first Power/VS product. I've come to love VSAM, not so much COBOL. My wife, Liz Cornell Barnett, just found her button collection which includes 2 other McSloy buttons in your collection, numbers 45 & 150, as well as 2 "McSloys" NOT in your collection. The 1st McSloy pin you don't have is "We're number 5746-xx 1". 5746-XX1 is the IBM Product ID for DL/1/DOS/VS, which was installed at RO around 1976. The next McSloy pin is "POWER/VS: Can You GRASP That?". Grasp was a competitor to the DOS Spooling System, Power/VS. This pin also would have been around 1976. Just found pin # 10 in your list. I'm not sure of the author. My wife and I are pretty sure it's NOT a McSloy. 3 geeks LOL captioned "…and then he deleted the page data set…", which you could do in those days. Again I think this is from around 1976. Fred Barnett
