...from the pages of The SMUG News, Harrisonburg, Virgina
Christmas will run
much smoother this year
The plane fare was over $700 alone, and after a seven-hour plane ride, I was still
asking myself if this trip was really necessary. The user group can hardly afford
this kind of story, but when the president asks me to go, what can I say? A story
like this doesn't come along often, and SMUG had to go for it. Mike couldn't go,
Preston couldn't go, so the editor of the SMUG NEWS had to go. Just my luck! I don't
need this kind of headache, what with the weather and our busiest season at the shop.
And, besides... it's Christmas Eve. Oh, well, a couple of hours and I'll be back.
__ They said the driver would pick me up at the airport
(if you can call it an airport), and he did. The ride didn't help my spirits much,
either, and for a while I was wondering if I would even make it to the computer center.
The closer we got, the harder it snowed and the colder it got. The message on MAUG
did say computer center, but this place was as antique as the car we arrived in.
Oh, well, I've seen Macintoshes in stranger places.
__ I sat in the reception area (living room?) almost
an hour. Is this any way to treat a reporter? My spirits had improved considerably
with hot coffee, the crackling fire, and all these things to look at. The place looked
more like a small town gift shop than a computer center. Everything you can imagine
was piled up on every available square inch of surface space. I wondered if anything
was for sale. My kids would like one of those.
__ In the corner were two old IBM terminals. By the
way they were stacked and covered with dust, I could tell they hadn't been used for
some time. The manuals were there, too, a whole stack of them along with what looked
like various software boxes. I could just make out WordStar and Lotus 123, well-used,
and thoroughly antique. This interview might just be okay after all.
__ My daydreaming was brought to an abrupt halt by the
irate voice of someone behind the closed door, obviously in a fit of rage.
__ "You can't do this to me... it's Christmas eve
and I just lost the entire Eastern hemisphere!" said the voice. "No, I
can't pull it down... [Pause] Yes, a system error, you nit! Let me talk to someone
who knows what they're doing!" [Another painful pause] "What? Don't give
me that, Lotus closed hours ago and won't be open until next week!"
__ Suddenly the door crashed open and a totally unglued
young fellow (young? he had a beard!) stormed over to the pile of IBM stuff and began
frantically shuffling through it. He was followed by another equally unglued fellow
who began wiping off the terminals and searching for the ends of cables and such.
I figured this was my chance. I had waited long enough and it was obviously not a
good time for an interview.
__ His office was more crowded and piled up than the
(reception?) room and although his back was turned I knew immediately why I was here.
He was still on the phone, but must have heard me come in...
__ "Can we get these things up?" he snorted,
then, "Oh, who are you? These blasted people have put me on hold again."
__ I said I was a reporter from the User Group and began
to explain myself but was abruptly cut off.
__ "Yes I'm holding!" He was so red in the
face I wondered if I could remember my CPR course. He wasn't young either.
__ "No I don't have a copy of Norton Symantec WHO???"
What coast are they on? Do you have a number" [a slight pause] "That's
two thousand miles from here. Young man, do you know who you are speaking to?"
[another pause] "Yes, but they're not that fast! NO, I won't hold."
__ And, SLAM! Down went the phone. He looked as if he
were hovering somewhere between homicide and a nervous breakdown. He turned to me.
"Young man, if you're not here to fix these blasted machines, we're in for trouble
like you've never seen before."
__ There were two Macs. Very old Macs to be sure. One
screen was still alive, showing what looked like an empty spreadsheet -- no database.
The other was black with the exception of a sad, frowning Mac icon. No movement.
No insertion points.
__ "I have a copy of Norton with me," I said,
my trusty PowerBook always standing by. I couldn't remember, but I thought FileMaker
was still on there as well. "Maybe I can help."
He brightened somewhat. "It better be good, son, because it will take us several
hours to get that IBM running again... if it will even run. I don't have several
hours." Turning, he shouted toward the door, "Sarah! Can you bring us some
coffee?" -- more of a wish than a command. Then "Here, son, have a seat.
Now what did you say your name was?"
__ After a short explanation, pushing aside the remnants
of what was once a manual for a program called JAZZ, we initialized some disks and
made a hasty emergency disk with Disk Doctor on it. His color and composure were
beginning to return.
__ He was a huge man, with a snowy white beard. We could
both just barely fit between his cluttered desk and the computer table. As the drives
whirred (yes, there were two of them) the Mrs. (Sarah?) entered with a large plate
of chocolate chip cookies and two festive mugs of steaming coffee on a tray. The
aroma of those, mixed with the remotest scent of pine and a smoldering pipe on the
desk made the room seem very much like a Christmas card.
__ The first time around we got no boot. No reads. I
tried again. The disks whirred. Let's try a sector hack. Didn't work. Try again.
Switch drives. I was beginning to get concerned... could I bring this off?
__ We finally got a desktop and finder. Empty. No files
anywhere to be found. System folder empty. This didn't look good. With the Doctor
we took a peek at the drive's innards. Although this was an antique computer running
antique software, he had a confidence that reassured me that everything was going
to be okay. We guessed it would be the largest file on the drive, if we could just
figure out which sectors to revive. Sizes were all we had to go on, dates had been
wiped and all the file names were mere strings of numbers. After more searching we
finally decided on a file and resurrected it. There it appeared on the desktop, named
"Recovered File 1098743."
__ We carefully copied it to a floppy and inserted it
into the PowerBook. The file had a blank, generic icon. Not good. Nothing on the
computer would access it. Not even BBEdit. I quickly did a find and came up with
CanOpener. Let's try this.
__ Sure enough, CanOpener pulled up the file and displayed
a strange screen of code and ascii text. Not good. We saved it out as a text file,
quit, and reopened it with BBEdit. Aimless meaningless ascii and code. I was perspiring
heavily by now. Only one thing to do...
__ I booted up FileMaker and imported the file. It took
a very long time. We waited. The ball spun. I sipped my mug, but not out of thirst.
Suddenly the screen came to life, and there at the top were the words "Eastern
Hemisphere."
__ "Young man, do you realize what you just did?"
Now he was downright cheerful. There before our eyes were literally thousands, no,
hundreds of thousands of names (how could this drive even hold that much data?).
The scrolling list went on and on into infinity. Could it be true? On one disk?
__ No one noticed my puzzlement. He and the little guys
had sprung to life and were dancing around as if it were already Christmas. More
of the little guys came in as a whirl of activity circled around the room at a frantic
pace.
__ "Son, you've done it! You've saved everything!"
__ How could I bring myself to break the news to him?
__ "There's been some mistake," I tried to
be gentle. "This could not possibly have happened -- there's no way, on this
single disk!" I clicked quit.
__ He was undaunted. A wide grin came over his face
(did I say something funny?). He reached down and did a quick shut-down and scooped
up the disk as it was ejected. As he buckled his wide black belt and straightened
his fur-trimmed coat, the room became calm. __ All eyes
seemed to focus on him.
__ Then as quick as a wink, he was up and across to
the outer door. "But wait!" I hurried after him.
__ "My son," he hesitated, "when you've
been in the Christmas business as long as I have, you come to know that there is
magic in this world. Miracles do happen, and that Mac just proved it."
__ Now, with the door open, cold, fluffy snow blowing
into the room, his pace had quickened, "...After all," he called over his
shoulder, "isn't that what Christmas is all about!"
__ He was gone. A shapeless form moving quickly through
the swirling wind and snow, only to be replaced by another form -- my driver.
__ "Sir, they're holding the plane. Weather's moving
in, we can't wait any longer."
__ As we climbed into the car, I could barely make out
a distinct whooshing sound and a distant, "Merry Christmas and to all a good
night!"
Fred Showker
This is reprinted from the Volume 2, #12 issue of the SMUG is The Shenandoah Macintosh
User Group (Smug) News, December 1986. Some of the terms, and procedure have been
updated. (UGNN News Service.)
User Groups are free to reproduce this article in their publications, with our
blessings for a happy holiday season!
USER GROUP EDITORS: Articles
posted in this area have been cleared for publication in your newsletters. We do
encourage you to contact the author for additional details and/or updates. Please
ALWAYS credit the original author!