I saw an ad run by Pierce Data Systems for a Mainframe Systems Programmer with 3-5 years experience. At 21 and on summer break, I thought to myself “I took a semester in assembly language programming, that’s pretty close.” I walked in with my stack of listings to show what I could do.

It worked.

In that day of mainframes there was no simple way of knowing how much empty space was on any storage device. On my first day on the job my boss turned to my and told me to write a channel program utility to list the empty space on all the DASDs (Direct-Access Storage Devices). That’s when I discovered the mysterious and undocumented EXCP command on my 360/370 Assembly Language Quick Reference meant EXecute Channel Program. Two days later I found the reference manual for channel programming, and by the end of the week I had my utility.

The primary clients for PDS were Micromedex Corp. and Dr. Barry Rumack at the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center. At PDI I was part of the 3 man team that created and developed the databases that were used to publish DrugDex and PoisonDex. DrugDex was a bibliographic database of every medical journal article that discusses interactions between drugs. It was cross-referenced and indexed by each of the drugs in the interaction. PoisonDex was a database of every household chemical on the market, cross referenced by poisoning symptoms, with recommendations for treatment. Later Micromedex extended their product line to include the DeHahn Series of Drugs in Prospect, Drugs in Research, and Drugs in Development where the database included chemical and technical data on each drug.