[Coco] Dealing with unwanted topics and some rambling on my coco stuff

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

I was one-term USAF myself.  Everybody wanted me to reenlist.  Four years, 20% of the way to a half-pay retirement, 50% of the way to going bugfuck nuts from boredom (I'd mastered my AFSC, there were no challenges forseeable).  Declined the renewal option in 1978, acquired my first TRS-80 Model One (it wasn't called that until after the Mod 2 came out in '79) and the rest is history.

Fell deeply in love with the Color Computer after I signed on as an instructor at the Las Vegas RSCC 11/02/1980 (hired based on the acceptance letter from "80-Micro" for an article around a pathetically simple program) (If you want to view the article and program, it;s at home.comcast.net/~wdg3rd/Computer_Cantos.pdf, planning to OCR it and translate it to Korn shell, Pythos and BASIC09, was going to start last weekend but La Esposa had a bit of a cardiac event and I was distracted, and this weekend we're cleaning up downstairs in hopes of a new tenant to offset the property taxes).

Spent a few years as the only Radio Shack employee in Southern California who gave a damn about the machine.  Of course, in the meantime, Xenix showed up and I've been a Unix user ever since in one flavor or another.  I set up the first multi-user Color Computer (that anybody in Tandy noticed) in an RSCC classroom about a month after OS-9 Level One shipped.  I read the manual, noticed a few commands that implied the capability.  Kludged a bit-banger null-modem between a 64k machine with OS-9 and a 16k machine with a Vidtex ROM.  Worked great except if you typed on the "terminal" while the "mainframe" was accessing the floppy, characters were dropped, so full-duplex was mandatory so you could see that.  By my figuring, at that time you could set up a two-station "time-sharing" system, hardware, software and firmware, for $1071 and small change (almost a quarter century and a lot of dead brain cells, I can't remember the exact number of pennies) including CA sales tax with the 
 Los An
geles addendum, considering the stuff on sale at the time and assuming you already owned two televisions (generally a safe bet).  A lot cheaper than a Mod 16 and a DT-1 (yes, I loved Xenix even more than OS-9 at the time, but knowing Xenix is what caused me to really look at the OS-9 docs) configuration, since that would have been seven or eight times the cost.
--
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

"What I know [about the art of the sword] boils down to this:  If you see a guy running at you with a sword, put two rounds in his chest to slow him down, then one into his brain to finish him off".  Aaron Allston, _Sidhe Devil_

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Frank Swygert <farna at att.net>
> I'm a 24 year USAF veteran, and I'll tell you the same thing! Of course I did 
> owe a bit more allegiance to the government because of my position (in the US 
> armed forces), but Gene is still 100% correct. 
> 
> ---------
> Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:44:24 -0400
> From: Chuck Youse <cyouse at serialtechnologies.com>
> 
> On Sep 24, 2008, at 2:36 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> 
> >> >>
> >> >> Government is simply a collective
> >> >> tool of the people, it's not an agency unto which we owe our  
> >> >> allegiance;
> >> >> and when it fails to suit its purpose, it is our right and patriotic
> >> >> duty to overthrow it, by armed revolution if necessary.
> >> >>
> >> >> C.
> >>     
> > > Amen.  Precisely.
> >   
> >> >>
> >>     
> 
> Something tells me we just both ended up on the no-fly list, Gene  ;) 
> 
> -- 
> Frank Swygert
> Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
> Magazine (AMC)
> For all AMC enthusiasts
> http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html
> (free download available!)
> 
> 
> --
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