The first time I used a real computer was in the eighth grade in 1976. The computer was a DEC PDP-8/M.
(This picture is a PDP-8/E was taken at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle WA in 2013.)
You can read more about the PDP-8 here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8
Our computer used the old telephone-system teletype machines which were like the Volkswagen's of input-output consoles. They were very clunky and noisy. We had one video terminal which could display 12 lines x 80 characters. It was like Christmas one day when we learned how to clear the screen from within a program as well as address any position on the screen. I adapted a star trek game to display the game board continuously on the screen.
This early computer used wrapped wires on its mother board, and also used real magnets in its core memory. One amazing thing it could do is start up again without reading a disk. Not like today where the memory forgets everything when you turn it off. With this computer, after you turned it off, you simply turned it on again, toggled the starting address and it remembered where it was.
This computer had one of the most amazing tricks I have ever seen. A visitor or technician came to visit one day. He set up a radio next to the computer and inserted a disk. He showed us a list of files. We choose "ode to joy". When he ran the file, we heard interference coming from the radio that sounded like music. He had Christmas carols on the disk as well. But the computer was not an intentional transmitter. Someone had figured out that when the computer does operation X, it generates through interference this note. And operation Y, likewise another note. Someone had hacked the computer to do something it was never supposed to do. It was so clever. I think the FCC would have something to say about this!
When I was 15, the summer my father died, I taught BASIC programming to children at our local science center. I spent all my free time at the science center because I could get computer time in exchange for helping to operate it. The computer was a DEC PDP-11/34 with RT-11 and Multi-User Basic, which was a more sophisticated and powerful system than the PDP-8.
One aspect of the software which fascinated me was that you could change the supervisory layer of the system. We could write games, but we could also change what happened before the games happened. Not only could we change the logon screen, but we could change how the logon screen worked. We could change the tool programs that others could use. For me, there was something magical about being able to change not only the games, but the underlying system itself. It was like being able to change the laws of physics or the properties of the land we walk on.
I also remember what we did at night. We would take the system down to a single user, and run larger games under the core operating system itself. My favorite was game called ADVENT, which was originally developed by Crowther and Woods. It was a textual interactive fiction game which features puzzle-solving and treasure hunting.
You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
Those times came to an end as I moved away to live with my Aunt. The work I did at the science center was featured in The New Hampshire View.
The summer after my father died, when I was 16 years old, I was accepted as an intern at Digital Equipment Corporation.
My starting salary was $215/week. In 1981 dollars. The salary was modest, but I would have paid them to work there.
I was there during the birth of Digital's most successful hardware/software system: the VAX-11 and VMS. The engineers behind this engineering marvel are to be found in the highest echelons of computing companies today. I did nothing of this myself. I was just lucky to be there.
There was a typing speed test program. It presented a list of words in multiple columns, and you had to enter the words as quickly as you could in the time allotted. It calculated your words per minute and kept a high-score list. The secretaries used to compete with one another for who could get the fastest time. One time, another intern and I conspired to fool the typing test. We used a capability called a "pseudo-terminal" to simulate a user to the typing test. Through the pseudo-terminal we sent the words electronically, giving us an inhumanly high score. Needless to say, the secretaries were highly impressed with us.
Another time, there was a gentlemen working in our group who was a little eccentric. He seemed quite paranoid and furtive. He carried a briefcase and the only thing in it was a stick of deodorant.
Now, in those days, we used a type of terminal called a VT-100. There was a bug in the firmware of the terminal where it would get into "infinite key mode", endlessly repeating the last key you typed. It was triggered by a sequence of apparently harmless characters. The operating system we all used has the ability to broadcast messages to other users or groups of users. For fun, the interns would broadcast the key sequence for infinite key mode to this poor guy. We all worked in cubicles and so anything loud would carry around the floor. We'd only do it once in a while, and when we did, he would scream "It's happening again!".
Another time, we accessed his files using my bosses computer account (we knew his password). We moved the guys files all around. He was very upset the next day. He became convinced there was a plot against him. He demanded an investigation. The audit trail only my boss logged in at the time.
I was there working as an intern at Digital Equipment Corporation in New England for five summers.
Meanwhile, during my senior year in college, I was told by my professor that there was a scholarship available. All I had to do was apply. On the one hand, I never intended to go to graduate school and didn't plan for it. On the other hand, I was sick and tired how hard everything was for me and I just wanted to get out. I received a fellowship from General Electric to attend the graduate school of my choice. The money was supposed to be a teaching fellowship, but they weren't very strict about that.
In my last summer before leaving for college in 1984, a co-worker and I worked in the evenings on our own textual fiction game. We decided to situate the game in our own software development plant. The work of writing the underlying software of a computer system is a wizardly process and full of mystery. Our large floors of cubicles had a maze like quality.
The scope and features of the game kept growing. The pressure to do my day work and finish the game at night before leaving for school became too much. I experienced my first panic attack and have had bouts of anxiety ever since.
You started the game at the helipad. In those days, executives were transported by helicopter between sites. You then entered the building and interacted with the guard. You then explored the building, acquiring objects that would aid you in your quest. At one point, you had to visit a developer who was serious typing away, and ask his help to locate one of the necessary objects. There was a maze of cubicles which you had to navigate. In games of this type, a standard strategy for beating the maze was to drop an object into each interlinked step along the way through the maze. In our game, however, there was a cleaning crew that followed you around through the maze and moved your objects. In the end, you had to learn the combination to the company safe in order to obtain the reward and then return to the helipad to be picked up in victory.
I never expected it, but we obtained our own little piece of notoriety.
You can read about it here:
http://www.kednos.com/kednos/Open_Source/The_Halls_Of_ZK
You can read more about the PDP-8 here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8
Our computer used the old telephone-system teletype machines which were like the Volkswagen's of input-output consoles. They were very clunky and noisy. We had one video terminal which could display 12 lines x 80 characters. It was like Christmas one day when we learned how to clear the screen from within a program as well as address any position on the screen. I adapted a star trek game to display the game board continuously on the screen.
This early computer used wrapped wires on its mother board, and also used real magnets in its core memory. One amazing thing it could do is start up again without reading a disk. Not like today where the memory forgets everything when you turn it off. With this computer, after you turned it off, you simply turned it on again, toggled the starting address and it remembered where it was.
This computer had one of the most amazing tricks I have ever seen. A visitor or technician came to visit one day. He set up a radio next to the computer and inserted a disk. He showed us a list of files. We choose "ode to joy". When he ran the file, we heard interference coming from the radio that sounded like music. He had Christmas carols on the disk as well. But the computer was not an intentional transmitter. Someone had figured out that when the computer does operation X, it generates through interference this note. And operation Y, likewise another note. Someone had hacked the computer to do something it was never supposed to do. It was so clever. I think the FCC would have something to say about this!
When I was 15, the summer my father died, I taught BASIC programming to children at our local science center. I spent all my free time at the science center because I could get computer time in exchange for helping to operate it. The computer was a DEC PDP-11/34 with RT-11 and Multi-User Basic, which was a more sophisticated and powerful system than the PDP-8.
One aspect of the software which fascinated me was that you could change the supervisory layer of the system. We could write games, but we could also change what happened before the games happened. Not only could we change the logon screen, but we could change how the logon screen worked. We could change the tool programs that others could use. For me, there was something magical about being able to change not only the games, but the underlying system itself. It was like being able to change the laws of physics or the properties of the land we walk on.
I also remember what we did at night. We would take the system down to a single user, and run larger games under the core operating system itself. My favorite was game called ADVENT, which was originally developed by Crowther and Woods. It was a textual interactive fiction game which features puzzle-solving and treasure hunting.
You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
Those times came to an end as I moved away to live with my Aunt. The work I did at the science center was featured in The New Hampshire View.
The summer after my father died, when I was 16 years old, I was accepted as an intern at Digital Equipment Corporation.
My starting salary was $215/week. In 1981 dollars. The salary was modest, but I would have paid them to work there.
I was there during the birth of Digital's most successful hardware/software system: the VAX-11 and VMS. The engineers behind this engineering marvel are to be found in the highest echelons of computing companies today. I did nothing of this myself. I was just lucky to be there.
There was a typing speed test program. It presented a list of words in multiple columns, and you had to enter the words as quickly as you could in the time allotted. It calculated your words per minute and kept a high-score list. The secretaries used to compete with one another for who could get the fastest time. One time, another intern and I conspired to fool the typing test. We used a capability called a "pseudo-terminal" to simulate a user to the typing test. Through the pseudo-terminal we sent the words electronically, giving us an inhumanly high score. Needless to say, the secretaries were highly impressed with us.
Another time, there was a gentlemen working in our group who was a little eccentric. He seemed quite paranoid and furtive. He carried a briefcase and the only thing in it was a stick of deodorant.
Now, in those days, we used a type of terminal called a VT-100. There was a bug in the firmware of the terminal where it would get into "infinite key mode", endlessly repeating the last key you typed. It was triggered by a sequence of apparently harmless characters. The operating system we all used has the ability to broadcast messages to other users or groups of users. For fun, the interns would broadcast the key sequence for infinite key mode to this poor guy. We all worked in cubicles and so anything loud would carry around the floor. We'd only do it once in a while, and when we did, he would scream "It's happening again!".
Another time, we accessed his files using my bosses computer account (we knew his password). We moved the guys files all around. He was very upset the next day. He became convinced there was a plot against him. He demanded an investigation. The audit trail only my boss logged in at the time.
I was there working as an intern at Digital Equipment Corporation in New England for five summers.
Meanwhile, during my senior year in college, I was told by my professor that there was a scholarship available. All I had to do was apply. On the one hand, I never intended to go to graduate school and didn't plan for it. On the other hand, I was sick and tired how hard everything was for me and I just wanted to get out. I received a fellowship from General Electric to attend the graduate school of my choice. The money was supposed to be a teaching fellowship, but they weren't very strict about that.
In my last summer before leaving for college in 1984, a co-worker and I worked in the evenings on our own textual fiction game. We decided to situate the game in our own software development plant. The work of writing the underlying software of a computer system is a wizardly process and full of mystery. Our large floors of cubicles had a maze like quality.
The scope and features of the game kept growing. The pressure to do my day work and finish the game at night before leaving for school became too much. I experienced my first panic attack and have had bouts of anxiety ever since.
You started the game at the helipad. In those days, executives were transported by helicopter between sites. You then entered the building and interacted with the guard. You then explored the building, acquiring objects that would aid you in your quest. At one point, you had to visit a developer who was serious typing away, and ask his help to locate one of the necessary objects. There was a maze of cubicles which you had to navigate. In games of this type, a standard strategy for beating the maze was to drop an object into each interlinked step along the way through the maze. In our game, however, there was a cleaning crew that followed you around through the maze and moved your objects. In the end, you had to learn the combination to the company safe in order to obtain the reward and then return to the helipad to be picked up in victory.
I never expected it, but we obtained our own little piece of notoriety.
You can read about it here:
http://www.kednos.com/kednos/Open_Source/The_Halls_Of_ZK
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