

July 1982: Living with a Computer - cwan
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/07/living-with-a-computer/6063/1/

======
superk
Reminds me of my car... it's a 1979 Toyota Land Cruiser. I found the owner's
manual online and it's surprising what was expected of an automobile owner 30
years ago: lubricating the chassis, servicing the oil filter (not changing,
but dismantling and cleaning the parts), lubricating the distributer,
differentials, changing electrolytes, etc.. It's like back in the day... men
were men... even if they were dorky men with computers.

~~~
jacquesm
Minis had to have 'minor service' every 5000 km, and I think it's good
practice to have a good look at your car every few thousand anyway. One day I
spotted a cracked front disc like that, in an emergency situation that might
have been a real problem.

I'm not sure what you mean with 'changing electrolytes', I think you refer to
filling up the battery with distilled water, electrolyte is not normally
replaced afaik.

------
asmithmd1
The company that put his computer together is still around: <http://optek-
inc.com/>

------
rbabich
Posted a few months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1291580>

------
jbooth
Things I learned from this article include:

There was once a word processing machine named Wangwriter.

~~~
jacquesm
The 'wang' was a pretty solid setup, a small computer with several terminals
and a near as you could tell 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' layout program, as
well as templates and output to daisy wheel printers.

The bank where I worked used these for almost every department, Wang made a
killing selling them.

Very high quality hardware too, the monitor arms could be used to bludgeon
stray dinosaurs with.

The Wang writer inspired me to write a proper editor for a mainframe (and
later ported it to the Atari ST and from there to a bunch of other computers)
that I worked with, which still had a line oriented editor instead of a full-
screen one. I'm no longer using it, but it was a really good exercise to put
that together.

------
nervechannel
"When I need new programs, I try to write them myself"

Good times...

------
thisrod
"Disk-operating system" makes much more sense with the hyphen.

