Computer Superstitions

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:49 pm

One of the computer related myths I am most familiar with relates to FastLoad (and other disk access accelerators) for the C64 and 1541 drives.

According to the myth, the drive spun the disk faster to transfer data faster and that could ruin them in the medium to long term.

Funny how history has a way of catching up with technology as faster CD-ROM drives actually do spin CDs (or DVDs) faster and sometimes, it does break them.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:35 pm

Yep. I knew a girl who owned a precious CD-R disc full of beloved MP3:s. It was back in the late 1990's or just around the new millenium by the way.

Anyway, she got a new CD reader in her computer. Previously she used to copy file by file from the CD to hard disk, and then play back the file. This time, she decided to play it back directly from the CD-R.

The disc was old, well used and a bit wobbly. Take 52X into account, and you can imagine how the disc was obliterated inside the drive. She was more sad about the loss of her MP3 collection than the drive itself, as the latter was under warranty.

Victragic · Post by **Victragic** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 10:42 pm

This thread might also be called 'things our parents believed to be true about computers'..

When we first got our Vic, my father tried to convince me that the cartridges had moving tapes inside them, because every computer he had ever used had only had tapes (reel-to-reel) as storage...

I might add, he's been using computers for 30+ years and still doesn't know what the difference between his RAM and his harddrive memory is, so there's no point arguing.

Post by **Jeff-20** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 11:10 pm

My older brother tried to convince me that if you put an audio tape (with music) into a datacassette that the lyrics of the song would print out on the screen in rhythm to the music. I never got a tape drive, so I couldn't prove him wrong.

pitcalco · Post by **pitcalco** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:45 am

Jeff-20 wrote:My older brother tried to convince me that if you put an audio tape (with music) into a datacassette that the lyrics of the song would print out on the screen in rhythm to the music. I never got a tape drive, so I couldn't prove him wrong.

Yes, I certainly remember that one.

There was a Commodore PET in the classroom with a tape drive. One of the kids had a tape with a song and there was some dispute as to what the lyrics were (it was some Blondie song) so we decided to put it into the computer as the best way to find out the lyrics.

Of course, we were disappointed.

PaulQ · Post by **PaulQ** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 9:31 am

Reminds me of the myth that playing a computer tape in your home stereo would ruin it. I did this accidentally a number of times, and while it was awfully hard on the ears, I don't think it hurt the stereo at all.

pitcalco · Post by **pitcalco** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 11:05 am

DigitalQuirk wrote:Reminds me of the myth that playing a computer tape in your home stereo would ruin it. I did this accidentally a number of times, and while it was awfully hard on the ears, I don't think it hurt the stereo at all.

I thought that sound was neat! It reminded me of burglar alarms or such things. But you are right, it was probably worse for the ears then the stereo.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:39 pm

Not really a superstition at all, but back in my school during the PET/VIC/C64 days everyone always called the backspace key the "Insta-del" key (pronouncing it phonetically like that). We didn't know the proper name for the key, and probably didn't even realise that INST/DEL stood for Insert/Delete (we were kids!).

Anyone else pronounce it like this back in "the day"?

Post by **Jeff-20** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 9:21 pm

I still pronounce it "insta-del". Not because I don't know the proper name. I just prefer to say that.

I don't know if this is related, but after the movie War Games, we were all convinced that computers could just be "talked to". When I finally got a home computer years later, I was a little sad that I couldn't just ask the computer to "play a game". So after learning a little BASIC, I wrote a simple program that scripted a predictable conversation based on the movie. I used it to fool my sister into thinking the movie was possible. Neither of us had seen the film, we were just familiar through pop culture references and commercials.

It was just print statements and null INPUT statements. A script I could act with. I had planned a crude animation and everything. I really wanted to convince her that we were setting off bombs and stuff, but I didn't get that far. By the end, she hadn't realized that it was all a hoax, so I told her that it wouldn't work because I didn't have a modem. She pretended to believe me. Now that I think of it, she was most likely just humoring me the whole time. Big sisters can do that.

MacbthPSW · Post by **MacbthPSW** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 10:32 pm

I heard it called "Instant Delete" a lot around here

pitcalco · Post by **pitcalco** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:32 am

War-games, oh yes.

I wrote a little game on the PET based sort of on war games. It was incredibly lame.

It started off: - "This is global thermo-nuclear war. Are you sure you want to play?"

And then if you typed "no" it came up: "Sorry, sucker, you have to play anyway"

Then it would ask you to list all the cities you wanted to blow up. And then the reply would invariably be. "You die due to radiation. Noone wins this war."

Not best-selling material, to be sure.

As for the inst-del, we called it "instant delete". It never occurred to us that you could insert a character. We were still stuck in the old electric typewriter mindset which could erase a wrong character or entire line even, but then you would have to make the correction and then retype the rest of the line. That is exactly what we did on the computer as well.

There was a time when I thought it was for "instant dilute". Although water and electronics is not normally a good combination.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 1:14 am

This is fun. We had a VIC in the secondary school (11-13 y.o.) and we did not study English at that age, so INST-DEL was something we learned to use with the trial-and-error method, but we pronounced it in one italianized word, just like "ISDEL" or something similar.

Similarly, RESTORE and RETURN were pronounced exactly as you read them (reutrn being sometimes called "ritorno" - come back - so it was funny hearing things such as "premi ritorno" meaning "press return"). CRSR and CTRL were pronounced as single letters (CI-ERRE-ESSE-ERRE) and only years later we realized what exactly they stood for.

.

Bacon · Post by **Bacon** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 1:28 am

I always read the the Run/Stop key as one word, Runstop. It made sense to me since you used it to stop a running program. I did know how to use the Insert key however

In Sweden we start learning English at around age ten, so when I got my VIC I had a fairly large vocabulary, but neither my brothers nor I knew the word "poke" and for some reason we pronunced it like it was a Swedish word, more or less "poo-keh".

pitcalco · Post by **pitcalco** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 6:47 am

Bacon wrote:I always read the the Run/Stop key as one word, Runstop. It made sense to me since you used it to stop a running program. I did know how to use the Insert key however

In Sweden we start learning English at around age ten, so when I got my VIC I had a fairly large vocabulary, but neither my brothers nor I knew the word "poke" and for some reason we pronunced it like it was a Swedish word, more or less "poo-keh".

I understood the Run/Stop key much in the same way as you did at first. And as for "POKE", imagine what English speakers must think if they find out that "Puke" is a boy's name in Sweden!

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 7:03 am

Bacon wrote:I always read the the Run/Stop key as one word, Runstop. It made sense to me since you used it to stop a running program. I did know how to use the Insert key however

Yeah, my friends and I always called it the Runstop key. If someone said "Press the STOP" key, I wouldn't have known what they were talking about (well, I might have pressed STOP on the datasette).