20 Jul
2023
20 Jul
'23
9:14 p.m.
> [snip]
>> Chuck's only saying that because he wasn't invited to "work
out."
>
> Those of us who received such invites should form a club or somethin'.
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:
Survivors of John Draper
I ran into John Draper often.
When I got my PC Technical Reference Manual, but had not yet received a
PC, I visited him in the gated community (to keep people out, not a
prison) near the Caldicott Tunnel.
We spent a couple of hours with the manual, and wrote trivial programs,
such as putting characters on the screen with Int10h. He gave me a copy
of the SCP assembler. We did not work out.
At NCC in 1983, (when it was too hot for the tents), booth idiots at both
Intertec/Superbrain and Telvideo told me that they would sue me if I
included their disk formats in XenoCopy, because they could not understand
any reason to transfer files between disk formats other than to steal
their proprietary software. I added both format that night.
I bought John lunch, and over air conditioned diner food, he told me the
basics and directory structure for p-system disks. Very worthwhile for
me. We did not work out.
One time, he visited me at my office. At one point, he had a temper
tantrum, yelling at people in the lobby of the building, because he
thought that he smelled a cigarette. I did not invite him back. We did
not work out.
So, I was an acquaintance of John Draper, rather than a survivor, because
I never work out.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com