Like any self-proclaiming dork, I love looking at old computers (el porn de geek?) and the post space age interfaces that accompany them. But in addition to aesthetics, I have another vested interest ... my late father. He worked for digital Equipment corporation for 32 years. He was a tech writer and did a lot of work revolving around memory and chips. He told me this story about being flown out to seattle once to work on this amazing experimental hard drive in the 60's that weight a million pounds and held like 2 megabytes of information. Hilarious.
I'd go visit him occasionally at his massive work complex in Maynard, Mass. He would always have odd computer paraphernalia laying around the house. Instead of usb there was like 125 pin connectors the size of your fucking head. He brought home what would later become home computers. He had this text only Zork game we played (before atari came out) it went something like this:
game: You are standing in a room. there are walls. You are scared. What do you want to do?
you: go north
game: you cannot go north
you: go east
game: it is not advisable to go east
you: blow me
game: I do not understand your request
and so on ...
here is an online version
Digital no longer exhists. They became HP/Compaq and were essentially dissolved into memories and legend.
Man do I miss that guy. He would be 64 this saturday. Raise a glass to Luther this weekend.
-d
2 komente:
I did not realize that our fathers worked in the same field. My pop was an engineer/programmer. I remember going on a field trip to the L.A. Times in the 70s. He worked there as a programmer. We got to go into the "computer room", which was the size of my house, each section of computer the size of my bathroom. The data came out in long strings of paper. It was really hot and noisy in there, too! I was very confused and afraid.
My brother and I were also privy to those early pcs and their wonderful games. I always went into the room that was inadvisable!
RK
done done and done-diddleeee-done.
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