[Coco] Re: [Color Computer] Andy´sASCII-Circuit

[Ward Griffiths]

On Tuesday 28 September 2004 07:26 am, Ray Watts wrote:
> Damn, Torsten, and I thought I was speaking good German!  I used to
> have a drawing of the interior of a U-Boat with everything described
> in the same mock (or pidgen) German.  It was Hilarious!  Torpedoes
> were schwimmenloudenboomens.  Too bad I lost it.
>
> Cheers,    Griz
>
> Torsten Dittel wrote:
> >>Care to give us Germanically challenged a proper
> >>translation? :)
> >
> >Actually it's not German, just something that *sounds* German at
> > least for an English speaking person. I was remembering this great
> > UK comedy show, "Monty Pyton's Flying Circus", they were talking
> > like that when they were acting as some German Nazis. Or Charly
> > Chaplin as the Dictator: "Wienerschnitzleritsch!" LOL
> >
> >Torsten

When in doubt, just turn on your machine with an external modem and gaze 
at dem blinkenlights for a while.

From the Jargon File, aka _The New Hacker's Dictionary_ (and if you 
don't know what that is you're much too young for retrocomputing):

blinkenlights /blink'n-litz/ /n./ Front-panel diagnostic
lights on a computer, esp. a dinosaur. Derives from the last word of the 
famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German that once 
graced about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking world. One 
version ran in its entirety as follows:

                   ACHTUNG!  ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!  Das
     computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben.
     Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken
     mit spitzensparken.  Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
     Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in
     das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.

This silliness dates back at least as far as 1959 at Stanford University 
and had already gone international by the early 1960s, when it was 
reported at London University's ATLAS computing site. There are several 
variants of it in circulation, some of which actually do end with the 
word `blinkenlights'.

In an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, German hackers have 
developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster in fractured 
English, one of which is reproduced here:

                              ATTENTION
     This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
     Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
     allowed for die experts only!  So all the "lefthanders" stay away
     and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
     intelligencies.  Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked
     anderswhere!  Also: please keep still and only watchen
     astaunished the blinkenlights.

See also geef.

Old-time hackers sometimes get nostalgic for blinkenlights because they 
were so much more fun to look at than a blank panel. Sadly, very few 
computers still have them (the three LEDs on a PC keyboard certainly 
don't count). The obvious reasons (cost of wiring, cost of front-panel 
cutouts, almost nobody needs or wants to interpret machine-register 
states on the fly anymore) are only part of the story. Another part of 
it is that radio-frequency leakage from the lamp wiring was beginning 
to be a problem as far back as transistor machines. But the most 
fundamental fact is that there are very few signals slow enough to 
blink an LED these days! With slow CPUs, you could watch the bus 
register or instruction counter tick, but at 33/66/150MHz it's all a 
blur.


-- 
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net    http://home.comcast.net/~wdg3rd/

No phrase sickens me more than the pious "'Tis God's will" and I must be
hearing it in one form or another at least twenty times a day.
    --  Richard Cowper, "The Hertsford Manuscript", F&SF Oct '76 p31col2