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184 lines
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184 lines
10 KiB
HTML
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<TITLE>T E X T F I L E S</TITLE>
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<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000">
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<FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00">
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<B>AN APPLE PANIC ATTACK</B>
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<P>
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I often have moments of feeling like there's so many projects on my burners
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that I'll never get back to them all, and some important or unique ideas will
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be lost with me, but usually this doesn't manifest itself in a full-on panic.
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<P>
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I had one of those mornings, where I'm actually lying in my bed, sweating,
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feeling all these obligations and promises to myself desperately slipping
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out from my grasp, and me unable to regain the state of mind they were fostered
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in. It's dark, I can hear myself thinking, and I feel like it's all going
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to be lost forever....
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<P>
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Let me take a moment to try and describe one example of these attacks; maybe it'll
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inspire others to help.
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<P>
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I don't know why, but Apple IIs fascinate me more than any other computer from
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the 1980s, with the possible exception of the Commodore Amiga. This is especially
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odd because I wasn't generally an Apple II owner; I had an IBM PC that I did
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all my BBS transactions on, and while I did get an Apple //c in 1985, I couldn't
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connect to AE lines or do Cat-Fur transfers or any of that Apple-Specific stuff.
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But there was always something about the Apples I found majestic, even enviable,
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with their inspired lines and soothing beige coloring. Maybe this sounds pathetic
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to someone looking back, but I got a feeling of power looking at them. They were
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like incredible tools, just lying there next to each other in the school's computer
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room.. docked, almost, waiting for the right driver to take them to their full
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potential. And this was before I had the chance to open one up and look inside...
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<P>
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Apples could blow a young kid's mind. They might have seen the cool way you
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could do color or high-resolution plotting, and then someone would show you a
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copy (always a copy) of Broderbund's Choplifter, and your eyes would just
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literately pop out of your head. How was this possible? How were you seeing these
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almost perfect animations of a helicopter turning, banking, and riding across
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the screen? It was cool. It was beyond cool. It was something you wanted to
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be a part of.
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<P>
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Like I said, I was a PC kid, and you might notice this social quirk today, but
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back then the different home computer brands were indelible lines in the sand;
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you did not cross them, unless you were scarfing textfiles from an off-brand
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BBS or logging onto a C-64 board to rag on every sub-board you could find
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about how another brand of computer blew chunks, until you were deleted.
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This was a pervasive thing:
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<P>
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Frank LaRosa
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<A HREF="http://www.textfiles.com/humor/COMPUTER/c64.txt">writes about the typical C-64 user</A>.<BR>
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The Baron writes about
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<A HREF="http://www.textfiles.com/humor/COMPUTER/c64story.txt">Commodore Users</A>.<P>
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If people stayed on their own types of BBSes (say, IBM-PC based), then they
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often started drawing lines on the type of BBS software being used, or the
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amount of hardware hooked to the machine. This territorial battle was decisive,
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all-pervading, and colored nearly every debate. What kind of computer you
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owned was who you were, who you could hope to be, what BBSes you were welcome
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on, what sub-boards you should post on.
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<P>
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Who knows this? Anyone who was there. Do they think about it now? Maybe, maybe
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not on a conscious level. Is it something that is still relevant? Well, have
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you ever seen a Linux and Windows user face off about their individual operating
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systems? This amazing thing still goes on, this turf war over turf they don't
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own, can't or won't ultimately control in a universal sense; This is knowledge
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people should know about, if not for entertainment, then at least for
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enlightenment. Treating other people, other special people who have learned
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computers as well as you, like they're garbage and the enemy... this isn't
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what it was about. It's not what it's about now.
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<P>
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Just gliding over the words written about the Apple BBSes of that time, I
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can feel memories rushing back to me, of visiting my friends who had Apple
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IIs and seeing really cool games with what seemed at the time like stunning
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graphics, of clutching my small plastic box of 5 1/4" floppy disks with the
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little notch cut in them to make them double-sided, and strolling into my
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high school's computer lab, hoping that one of the all-important back rows
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of computers weren't filled, because you had the most time to reboot the
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computer into something "respectable" because games weren't allowed until 4pm..
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I remember the first time I saw the Outland's 10 megabyte disk drive, in a
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time where the 140k floppy reigned supreme, and the two of us plotting over
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the phone how we would homestead this new unlimited space into a bustling
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city of sub-boards and file areas for the Milliways BBS. We argued and
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laughed and dreamed, the two of us; the Apple in his basement was how I'd
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found him, and he was a friend I've never forgotten. <P>
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When you opened an Apple II or II+ or IIe, and you always ended up doing so,
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the computer simply invited you to experiment, to plug things in, to get your
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hands on cards or expansion units or whatever else people dreamed up, and
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plug them in. Memory expansion made the machine run fast and load quicker,
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and additional disk drives took the pain out of copying and switching disks
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when playing games. After your arms became numb from switching disks every
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few sectors while copying a friend's "wares", you started to figure out how
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you could beg, borrow or steal to get a second disk drive. And when you
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did, or found a friend who had enough money to buy one, you watched the
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two drives light their full-sized LEDs and could almost hear the data being
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transferred. Disk one would light, and then disk two would light, and you'd
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know by the clicks that everything was going all right.
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<P>
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This isn't my story. This is the story of every kid who owned an Apple.
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And Apples were just part of it. Atari, Texas Instruments, Commodore, IBM,
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Timex-Sinclair.... there were cultures and mores and funny and heartbreaking
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stories inside each of these brand-name worlds.
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<P>
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It scares me that all of these wonderful things that happened are being lost in
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time, being forgotten, or slimed over with slick meta-discussions made by
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web-savvy and Internet-Myopic quasi-writers, all describing this unique point
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in history like it was just a warm-up period before the "real" things happened,
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instead of seeing it as an era in itself, a place that was both special and
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terrifying, both inspiring and insipid. This is what makes me wake up and feel
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like I have to spread the word with textfiles.com.
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<P>
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As another example, take a look at this file written by the Red Ghost about
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<A HREF="http://www.textfiles.com/humor/COMPUTER/applemaf.hum">the Apple Mafia
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story</A>. It's less important to me how accurate Red Ghost's actual facts are
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(although he tries very hard to back them up and give corroborating testimony)
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than how he unwittingly captures many more social constructs about BBSes of
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the early 1980's. It's 1986 when he writes it. This is all ancient history
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to him! It's all stuff that he's pulling from his memory because his younger
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friend was calling BBSes and he was seeing the story of the BBS world he was
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a part of being misconstrued and misrepresented. The name "Apple Mafia" isn't
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a brand or functioning corporate entity; it is, even by his own admission,
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an informal coalition of Apple pirates and phreaks who used many of the
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same BBSes to communicate with each other. Yet he is offended that the new
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crowd (2 years later) is unfairly claiming the reputation of the previous
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Apple Mafia and using it to further their ends. You get in this file an
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interesting cross section of handles and aliases in use around the early
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1980's, and you get a feel (somewhat) for what the twisted and hard-to-follow
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histories of some of the BBSes were. His unbackable statement that the 718
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Queens) area code is the home of the majority of Phreaks and Pirates aside,
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you walk away from reading this file with the feeling that you know more
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about some aspects of this fascinating sub-culture.
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<P>
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My attraction to the Apple usually manifests itself to me in those moments
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when I'm thinking about my different projects and I stupidly open up a browser
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on my high-speed Internet connection. There goes productivity. When I'm online
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at a time when my brain is fuzzy, like 6 in the morning, I usually jettison
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my things I have to do and start searching here and there for rare pieces of
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Apple II information. Maybe I want to know what clubs there are out there,
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or if people are trying to update these machines to use such relatively recent
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technologies as Ethernet and high-capacity SCSI disks. <P>
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Occasionally I've stumbled across some wonderful gems, like the time I ran
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into someone who gave me access to 300+ Apple II textfiles that were
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"soft docs": typed-in transcriptions of Apple II Game Manuals that the
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pirates put on the disk along with the cracked games. But often, I just
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come up blank; I find myself trying to just look for some overview
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of the times that I lived through in the 1980s, times that a lot of people
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now driving the internet economy lived through and were a part of,
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and there's nothing. I can't find people who are talking about the thrills
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of Cat-Fur modems and getting those incredible pieces of hardware to
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do four-part harmony or voice modification. I can't find people talking
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about their reigns as SysOps of Apple II BBSes in any depth, beyond
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the fact that they ran them from this year to that year, and then they
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stopped. Why aren't people telling this story? This story is important.
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<P>
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I'm hoping that textfiles.com will inspire people to give context to the
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ASCII, that they'll tell me and tell the world what they went through,
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their joys, their heartbreaks, their experiences.
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<P>
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But what if it doesn't? What if my stuff becomes the only place where you
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find out about Sherwood Forest II? (Do a websearch for that name, and I'm
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well over half the hits!) What if it's up to me to be the person who brings
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this story, this massive epic of human experience to the people who didn't
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experience it directly, or who were born too late to live through it?
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<P>
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This is why I panic.
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<P>
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<I>- May 14, 2000</I>
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