They are now Plethoric !
Invaders
zx Spectrum
iBook G4
IBM T42
OK, This was on BBC the other day, the program was Click Online with host Stephen Cole.
In one of their featured segment, they were showing all old antique pieces of computer systems.
It was part of a virtual tour around the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The Computer History Museum boasts to be the world's largest and most significant history museum for preserving and presenting the computing revolution and its impact on the human experience.
And not to my surprise they had the classic Atari 800XL on display. It just took me back to the early 90s, when I first laid my hands one such piece of computing marvel. While I call it a marvel now,I still remember I simply had no clue as to what I should do with it, it took me quite some time to realise that it was a home computer apart from a gaming system.
There is a big story behind it actually, we did not own this piece but my dad had borrowed it from one of his friend. Well, it was the ultimate gizmo that one could possess in those days. This was well during the time when the Intel PC AT/XT machines were in their proverbial infancy. If I recall right, the only use that I made out of it was to play the "Invaders" game. Figuring out the connections were pretty straight forward. The thing had one RF connector to the TV, a joystick slot and power. Plug the Invaders catridge into a 8 bit catridge slot on top and switch it on. Poof! you are ready with the game. Surprisingly, we had couple of more catridges but only invaders worked. All this while I had not even attempted to make use of the home computer aspect of it. There was this rougly a 100 page manual, with some intimidating jargons and explanations that I could barely follow.
In one of their featured segment, they were showing all old antique pieces of computer systems.
It was part of a virtual tour around the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The Computer History Museum boasts to be the world's largest and most significant history museum for preserving and presenting the computing revolution and its impact on the human experience.
And not to my surprise they had the classic Atari 800XL on display. It just took me back to the early 90s, when I first laid my hands one such piece of computing marvel. While I call it a marvel now,I still remember I simply had no clue as to what I should do with it, it took me quite some time to realise that it was a home computer apart from a gaming system.
There is a big story behind it actually, we did not own this piece but my dad had borrowed it from one of his friend. Well, it was the ultimate gizmo that one could possess in those days. This was well during the time when the Intel PC AT/XT machines were in their proverbial infancy. If I recall right, the only use that I made out of it was to play the "Invaders" game. Figuring out the connections were pretty straight forward. The thing had one RF connector to the TV, a joystick slot and power. Plug the Invaders catridge into a 8 bit catridge slot on top and switch it on. Poof! you are ready with the game. Surprisingly, we had couple of more catridges but only invaders worked. All this while I had not even attempted to make use of the home computer aspect of it. There was this rougly a 100 page manual, with some intimidating jargons and explanations that I could barely follow.
ATARI 800xl
Invaders
I still remember one of my valliant attempts to type in a program with the help of the manual. One summer afternoon, I decided to read the manual and figure out other features of the system. My first program was "How to make tea", I had no clue as what would happen when the program is run, I had this crazy thought that when the program is run it would show some fancy graphics on how to make tea.
The think the program was in Basic, and I started typing whatever was given in the manual, beleive me it was quite a task typing the whole program. Half way through I hit this character ":" and I had no clue how to make it appear on screen :-) was a complete googly. I struggled for about an hour and gave up, just could not complete my first program. Later, I asked my cousin who was into software then, and the answer happened to be very simple, it was "shift"+":" ahhh... yeah that simple, but the point is I didn't know that I had to hold them down simultaneously :-)
This was the time when I was in 8th standard. Later, the thing stopped working becaused of some loose contact with the power supply. Moreover, invaders was like dog poo when, my neighbour got himself a nintendo video game. The next infatuation was "Super Mario Bros.", I was so obsessed with the game that I used wait outside his house just for them to open the doors. I couldn't ring the bell without a reason, and my friend's mom certainly wouldn't let me in for this reason :-)
Then it was my friend's Spectrum home computer during my 10th standard. But this time around I was no novice and was pretty comfortably with writing programs in Basic. All programs were stored on a regular audio cassette, funny isn't it ! And experienced all sorts of nightmare when we tried to read the programs back from those tapes.
The think the program was in Basic, and I started typing whatever was given in the manual, beleive me it was quite a task typing the whole program. Half way through I hit this character ":" and I had no clue how to make it appear on screen :-) was a complete googly. I struggled for about an hour and gave up, just could not complete my first program. Later, I asked my cousin who was into software then, and the answer happened to be very simple, it was "shift"+":" ahhh... yeah that simple, but the point is I didn't know that I had to hold them down simultaneously :-)
This was the time when I was in 8th standard. Later, the thing stopped working becaused of some loose contact with the power supply. Moreover, invaders was like dog poo when, my neighbour got himself a nintendo video game. The next infatuation was "Super Mario Bros.", I was so obsessed with the game that I used wait outside his house just for them to open the doors. I couldn't ring the bell without a reason, and my friend's mom certainly wouldn't let me in for this reason :-)
Then it was my friend's Spectrum home computer during my 10th standard. But this time around I was no novice and was pretty comfortably with writing programs in Basic. All programs were stored on a regular audio cassette, funny isn't it ! And experienced all sorts of nightmare when we tried to read the programs back from those tapes.
zx Spectrum
The next big thing was the i286s and IBM PC clones(XTs) during my 11th and 12th in our school. Myself and couple of other friends we were the real pain for the system administrator then. We always messed with the autoexec.bat. Sometimes, added a simple program to the autoexec.bat which would claim itself to be a virus and start a TSR which key logs, we had total control over the systems. Other cool tricks included cleaning the boot record :-) and often the machines wouldn't boot and show up the famous "No system or system disk error". Our computer science teacher was totally fed up with our shenanigans gave up on us. It was real fun, and I can vividly remember, it was the first time I was introduced to some pornography on comps. remember the old "Alice in worderland" movie? we had a small piece of that movie on our school comp. as an executable. It was nothing but 10 frames in a contnuous loop :-) and you can pretty much guess what kind of content I am talking here. We were crazy about 3 games then, Prince of persia, Dangerous Dave and Prehistorik2.
This game Prehistorik 2 had such brilliant graphics that I still have a copy and play it at times, though they don't seem to work on Pentium 4 and above, throws some general protection error, damn INTEL ! so much for backward compatibility.
After that, it was studies studies and studies with no respite, From then on, till now I have come across a myriad of systems from the 386s to Pentium IV to SUN Sparc to PowerPC(Macintosh), once even saw a SGI workstation. The one thing that I've not laid my hands on are the cockroaches a.k.a. Mainframes ! :-)
Gaming just got better, we were in the age of Quake ! and networked gaming. While I was doing my master with UIUC, we were about 6 people in the lab slogging right through the night, cracking problem sets, assigments, writing project reports, listening to lecture etc. And we sharpened our swords(Minds actually! this was after a story that we read, which said that we have to sharpen our swords every while for it to be efficient) every now and then by playing multiplayer Quake 2 and later Quake 3 arena.
This game Prehistorik 2 had such brilliant graphics that I still have a copy and play it at times, though they don't seem to work on Pentium 4 and above, throws some general protection error, damn INTEL ! so much for backward compatibility.
After that, it was studies studies and studies with no respite, From then on, till now I have come across a myriad of systems from the 386s to Pentium IV to SUN Sparc to PowerPC(Macintosh), once even saw a SGI workstation. The one thing that I've not laid my hands on are the cockroaches a.k.a. Mainframes ! :-)
Gaming just got better, we were in the age of Quake ! and networked gaming. While I was doing my master with UIUC, we were about 6 people in the lab slogging right through the night, cracking problem sets, assigments, writing project reports, listening to lecture etc. And we sharpened our swords(Minds actually! this was after a story that we read, which said that we have to sharpen our swords every while for it to be efficient) every now and then by playing multiplayer Quake 2 and later Quake 3 arena.
Coming to the current state of affairs, no gaming no fun, just work work and work. I just don't find time to sit on my comp.(one in my home) Though, I spend some time with my notebook mostly to watch movies. I have a few personal projects in my mind but just am unable to find the time for them. Yeah... there are more personal ramblings, but let me save it for future posts :-)
I would love to own a iBook G4 but you don't get any for less than $1200, sexiest of all notebooks: the fully loaded IBM t42 and a Zaurus PDA... but, for the time being I must be contented with my modest PIII notebook.
I would love to own a iBook G4 but you don't get any for less than $1200, sexiest of all notebooks: the fully loaded IBM t42 and a Zaurus PDA... but, for the time being I must be contented with my modest PIII notebook.
iBook G4
IBM T42
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