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(415) 479-8328
24 HOURS
300-1200-2400 BAUD
8-N-1
The following are a collection of humorous
text files that I have gathered from bulletin
boards from across the country as well as from
other sources. They have appeared weekly in the
VARIETY section on STONEHENGE BBS. I would like
to share this collection. If you have anything
to add, your upload would be appreciated.
PART III
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
INTEL UNVEILS BELOW BOARD WITH EXPENDED MEMORY
1 April 1986, Hillsboro, OR: Intel Corporation's Personal
Computer Enhancement Operation (PCEO) today announced Below
Board, a memory add-on device for the underachiever. Below Board
is designed for the IBM PC, XT, AT and their compatibles or
incompatibles. Below Board conforms to the -1.4 revision of a
memory specification, the most negative revision to date. It is
believed that Below Board will spawn a whole new generation of
incompatible software as well as hardware.
Below Board operates by moving Conventional RAM down to the
memory space below 0K, where DOS can't conflict with it. The
new memory space is called expended memory. This is a superior
alternative to competitive products which allow normal software
to fill-up the memory. Below Board always maintains at least
640K of free memory. A side benefit to this method of memory
management is that nearly 100% of the 8086 to 80286 processing
capacity is kept available.
Below Board establishes a new class of PC products known as
Vacantware. Such products use an undocumented instruction in the
8086 processor family called VANISH. The VANISH instruction
places the CPU in Vapor mode, in which the expended memory can be
erased or ignored. Expended memory is relatively efficient,
since even CPU's that have been greatly speeded up, still only
require one wait state. No other states are allowed.
Shipments of Below Board are expected to begin within 2 to 15
months. Prices and billings will be announced shortly after
delivery. all orders must be placed prior to last year.
----------------
Stonehenge BBS [415] 479-8328
page
THE MACHO NERD
By Dan Gutman
There's a new breed of man around these days. I call him "The Macho
Nerd." The Macho Nerd is the high-tech guy of the Nineties who proves his
masculinity by letting the world know about his great computer system and how
much he knows about technology.
It no longer matters how athletic you are, how good-looking you are, or
how much money you make. All that matters is your hardware.
When you meet a Macho Nerd, the first thing he asks is "So...what kind of
system do you have?"
This is how The Macho Nerd sizes you up. Macintosh guys consider
themselves superior to Apple II guys, and Apple II guys consider themselves
superior to Commodore or Atari guys.
IBM guys, naturally, consider themselves to be above everybody.
I've met guys who were ashamed to tell me they still use an old TRS-80
computer. They can't even look you in the eye when they say it, and make sure
to add that they'll be buying a new computer any day now.
I myself am embarrassed to admit to Macintosh aficionados that I still
use "MacWrite," an adequate but elementary word processing program.
"Whattsa matter, wimp?," they sneer, "Not man enough to handle "Microsoft
Word"?
To these computer literate bullies, bigger is better, new is good, old is
bad, and the more money you paid for your equipment, the tougher you are.
It isn't good enough to have a hard disk drive anymore. Now you've got
to have a 40 MEGABYTE hard drive. It isn't good enough to have a RGB display.
Now you've got to have a FULL PAGE display. And a scanner on your desktop
always helps you earn respect.
Real men don't use floppy disks. Bytes are for sissies. Megabytes are
where it's at. The more the better. And the more desk space your computer
system takes up, the more of a man you are.
User friendliness is for wimps. Real men use hardware and software that
is so incoherent and confusing that Einstein would give up in disgust.
page
Computer people used to hide their hobby from the rest of the world like
it was an illicit activity. These days, you can't shut them up. Most
coversations, it seems, eventually work their way to spreadsheets and data
bases.
When it reaches that point, they like to show off their manliness by
spouting computer jargon. I know a few things about computers, but at a trade
show recently a guy talked to me for a half an hour and I have absolutely no
idea what he said. When he was finished, I felt like I had been beaten up
by the neighborhood bully.
The sad part is, it looks like The Macho Nerd is here to stay. Teenage
boys used to dream about driving a four-on-the-floor Corvette with 400
horsepower under the hood, mag wheels that could go from zero to sixty in less
than seven seconds and a good-looking blonde in the passenger seat.
These days, those same boys fantasize about a NEXT computer system with
four megabytes of memory and a Hewlett Packard laser printer that will go
from zero to 500 characters per second--and a good-looking blonde
telecommunicating from her terminal across the country.
Stonehenge BBS [415] 479-8328
page
NEW VERSION OF FOREM BBS SOFTWARE
----------------------------------
A new release of FoReM ST arrived yesterday. Among the features is
yet another new file transfer protocol, 'ZZZMODEM.' This new protocol
transfes data in blocks of 16 Megabytes, giving it the largest block size
of any file transfer protocol in the Known Universe. The checksum for each
block in a ZZZMODEM transfer is sent via XMODEM, for greater accuracy.
"This new protocol will allow us to transfer data at rates up to one one-
hundredth of one percent FASTER than by any previous method," explained
Phil "Compu" Dweeb, a FoReM aficionado, pausing occasionally to wipe
the drool from his chin.
Industry insiders were quick to point out that using ZZZMODEM, it
takes roughly 2 hours and 25 minutes to transfer a 20K file at 19,200 baud.
Mr. Dweeb said that this problem has been dealt with. "Each block is padded
with nulls, which take no time to send," he explained.
The new version of FoReM ST also has the new "Recursive ARCing"
feature. As Mr. Dweeb explains: "All download files are recursively ARCed
by FoReM before being put online. Our experience has shown that when you
ARC a file, it gets smaller. Therefore, the approach we have taken is to
repeatedly ARC the file until it reaches a size of roughly 10K. At that
point, it's hardly worth the trouble, wouldn't you say?"
Reportedly in the works for a future release is the patented "One
Length Encoding" process. Early reports suggest that this procedure can
reduce the length of a file to just 1 bit. Mr. Dweeb takes up the story:
"One day we were sitting around doing some hacken and phreaken, and one of
us started thinking. All binary data is encoded into bits, which are
represented by ones and zeros. This is because a wire can either carry a
current or not, and wires can therefore be set up in a a series that can
represent strings of ones and zeros. "Notice, however, that the real
information is carried in the ones, since the others carry no current. I
mean, what good does a wire do when it isn't carrying any current? So by
dropping all the zeros, you can easily cut file sizes in half. So we
decided that a cool way to speed up data transfer would be to only send the
one bits. The results were phenomenal -- an average speed increase of 50%!!
"After we finished the initial implementation, we kept finding ways to
make the thing faster, and more efficient. But then we realised that we
hadn't gone all the way. If you think about it, after you drop all the
zeros, you're left with a string of ones. Simply count all the ones, and
you're left with another binary string. Say you end up with 7541 ones. In
binary, that's 1110101110101. So immediately we've reduced the number of
bits from 7541 to 13. But by simply repeating the process, we can reduce it
further. 1110101110101 becomes 111111111, or 9, which is 1001, which be-
comes 2, which is 10, or 1.
page
Once we reach a string length of 1, we have
reached maximum file com-pression. We now have the capability to encode
virtually unlimited amounts of information into a single digit! Long-
distance bills will never be the same! "Now, that's not to say that there
aren't a few problems. The biggest one we have encountered is that for some
reason, there seems to be a certain amount of data loss during the re-
conversion process. It seems that sometimes the file cannot be expanded
into its original form. So, the solution we came up with was to have an
encryption key associated with each file. When a One Length Encoded file is
received and is undergoing decompression, the unique encryption key must be
supplied. That way, we end up with a 100% success rate in our conversions!
"A problem which we are having difficulty resolving lies in the fact
that to ensure a 100% success rate, the encryption key must be exactly as
long as the original file. We are confident, however, that the use of our
Recursive ARCing procedure will help to solve this problem..."
Stonehenge BBS [415] 479-8328
page?
ESD PRODUCT SERVICE SUPPORT
SUBJECT:NEW RETAIN TIP
Record number: H031944
Device: D/T8550
Model: M
Hit count: UHC00000
Success count: USC00000
Publication code: PC50
Tip key: 025
Date created: O89/02/14
Date last altered: A89/02/15
Owning B.U.: USA
Abstract: MOUSE BALLS NOW AVAILABLE AS FRU (Field Replacable Unit)
TEXT:
MOUSE BALLS ARE NOW AVAILABLE AS A FRU.
IF A MOUSE FAILS TO OPERATE,OR SHOULD PERFORM ERRATICALLY, IT MAY
BE IN NEED OF BALL REPLACEMENT. BECAUSE OF THE DELICATE NATURE OF
THIS PROCEDURE,REPLACEMENT OF MOUSE BALLS SHOULD BE ATTEMPTED BY
TRAINED PERSONNEL ONLY.
BEFORE ORDERING, DETERMINE TYPE OF MOUSE BALLS REQUIRED BY EXAMINING
THE UNDERSIDE OF EACH MOUSE. DOMESTIC BALLS WILL BE LARGER AND HARDER
THAN FOREIGN BALLS. BALL REMOVAL PROCEDURES DIFFER, DEPENDING UPON
MANUFACTURER OF THE MOUSE. FOREIGN BALLS CAN BE REPLACED USING THE
POP-OFF METHOD, AND DOMESTIC BALLS REPLACED USING THE TWIST-OFF METHOD.
MOUSE BALLS ARE NOT USUALLY STATIC SENSITIVE, HOWEVER, EXCESSIVE
HANDLING CAN RESULT IN SUDDEN DISCHARGE.
UPON COMPLETION OF BALL REPLACEMENT,THE MOUSE MAY BE USED IMMEDIATELY.
IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT EACH SERVICER HAVE A PAIR OF BALLS FOR
MAINTAINING OPTIMUM CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, AND THAT ANY CUSTOMER
MISSING HIS BALLS SHOULD SUSPECT LOCAL PERSONNEL OF REMOVING
THESE NECESSARY FUNCTIONAL ITEMS.
P/N33F8462 -- DOMESTIC MOUSE BALLS
P/N33F8461 -- FOREIGN MOUSE BALLS
--------------------------------------------------------------------
[This came out of an IBM service database. Of course it's referring
to the rubber ball inside a computer mouse...]
page?
STAR TREK: IN SEARCH OF POWER
"Sulu, set path to the root directory and install the ram disk for
320k. We're taking her out."
"Aye, sir."
"Scotty, I want full power to the megabit ram chips and to the hard
drives."
"Captain, yer overloadin' her as it is. The power supply just isn't
built to take two hard drrrives."
"Power, Scotty! I want more power! Chekov, install the disk cache.
Spock, any word on the millions of instructions per second?"
"Fascinating, Captain. It seems as if the turbo accelerator board
is overrunning the hard drive, which, due to its poorer response time,
is slowing down the system performance."
"Scotty, where is that power!?"
"Captain, I'm givin ye all she's got. It's that miserable 80986
with the 512k bit bus multiplexed down to one pin. The wee beastie has
these teeny weeny little segments that can only handle so much. You'll
have to install an extended memory board, do bank switching, and
allocate a huge ram disk if you want to go any faster."
"Chekov, install the EMS board."
"Yes, sir."
"Uhura, any word from mainframe command?"
"Well, Captain, we're received several interrupts from the serial
port, but because we're not multitasking, the data is just sitting
there."
"Scotty, how much longer until we can shift into Unix?"
"Captain, if ye can squeeze another 60 megabytes onto that hard
disk, we might have room for Unix and a couple of system utilities.
Possibly an application. We'll need to increase the clock speed to 28
gigahertz. I think we can do it, but there are too many unknowns, too
many bugs in the system! We'll have to do a proper shakedown."
"Spock?"
"Unix is a massive system, Captain, and the commands have to be
decoded from hieroglyphics invented back in ancient times. It may be
more than we can handle."
"Sulu, put in the 60 meg hard drive, install Unix for mouse drive.
Prepare to go to Task speed on my signal."
"Mouse drive? ......Aye, Captain."
"Now! Yes, Bones? What do you want?"
"Jim, you just have a little spreadsheet work, mailing labels, and
some word processing. Don't you think you're overdoing it a bit?"
"Sulu?"
"Captain, she's shifting into multitasking. Task one. Task two....
Captain, I'm losing control at the helm. It looks like we've
encountered a bad sector."
page?
"Put it on visual, Sulu."
"Captain, the VGA is not responding, sir. Shifting resolution into
EGA mode."
"Spock? What's the problem?"
"Unknown, Captain. Unix seems to be rerouting all input to a null
device." Trying 'grep'", now muttering, "whatever that is."
"Scotty, what's happening with those '/dev' subdirectories?"
"Captain, she canna take much morrre.... Another fifteen seconds
and me math chips'll burrrn up for surrre...."
"Scotty, we're not using the math chip."
"Sorry, Captain, but I haven't been able to say that for twenty
minutes."
"Uhura, notify mainframe command."
"Captain, either communications is breaking up, or you're dropping
into Shakespearean stutter mode again."
"Captain, she canna take much morrre.... Another fifteen seconds
and me math chips'll burrrn up for surrre...."
"Enough Scotty!"
"Captain! I'm getting a message from mainframe command......
Apparently, sir, they're going to time-warp previously forgotten modes
of data handling, it looks like SQL syntax is forming in the language
port now."
"Scotty, quick, pop-up the menu shields. This could be a trick to
get us back to card punching."
"I'm sorry, Captain, but Dbase LCXIX doesn't have pop-ups that work
yet."
"Chekov, we need hardcopy! Fire HP LaserJet!"
"Aye, sir."
"Bones, how do I see which tasks are active?"
"I'm a doctor, Jim, not a command shell!"
"Scotty! Why can't I get a directory on this thing!!?"
"Captain, ye just canna have a mouse driven pull down menu system
with Unix. It's like matter and antimatter, the system's too bogged
down. Yer drainin me quartz crystals."
"Chekov, report."
"Captain, the little arrow is responding, but it gets to the side of
the screen before the windows have a chance to move..."
"Spock? What's happening to our multitasking?"
"It appears as if the needs of the one are outweighing the needs of
the many."
"Captain, she's not even runnin on reserve now. We'll have to do a
cold boot for surrre."
"Bones?"
"It's dead, Jim."
page?
REASONS TO HATE COMPUTERS
They cost too much.
They break down all the time.
They're too hard to fix.
All the different brands are incompatible.
They take up too much desk space.
They become obsolete five minutes after you leave the store.
They don't understand plain English.
You can't fix them by whacking them a few times with a hammer.
Electronic bulletin boards never have enough thumbtacks.
You have to know how to type to use them.
They lose your data every time there's an electrical storm in the
Western Hemisphere.
They give off weird, otherworldly radiation that probably causes
cancer but we won't find out until we all have it. And they make you go
blind too.
They all have three-pronged plugs, and it's a two-pronged world.
There are too many kinds to choose from.
All of them are lousy anyway.
Our grandparents never had them, and they got along just fine.
They're taking away people's jobs.
They don't do anything the average person needs.
They're ugly.
Printer ribbons have to be replaced too frequently.
They think the world can be reduced to strings of ones and zeros.
They forget everything they know the instant you turn them off.
Storing words on disks never made any sense and it never will.
Five cables sticking out of an appliance is cruel and unusual punishment.
Computer paper is cheap and flimsy.
Printers sound like World War III.
Since diskettes are not female disks, they have no right to their own word.
Computer furniture is uncomfortable and looks lousy around the house.
Computer salesmen are sleazeballs.
Instruction manuals are written by illiterate sadists.
When they sell you a $500 computer, they forget to mention that you have to
spend another $1,500 in order to do anything with it.
Most computers have dumb names.
How can you respect any machine controlled by a mouse?
Right now some kid is trying to figure out how he can use one to start a
nuclear war.
It hurts your back to sit in front of one for a long time.
They don't make good conversation at parties.
They are an escape from the reality of life.
page
When you make a mistake using one, you can't blame it on anybody.
Women don't seem to like them.
They are God's way of telling you that you're not confused enough.
It's too easy to get a shock by licking the stamps on electronic mail.
If there weren't any computers, we wouldn't have computer errors, computer
crime, or computer nerds.
If computers can tap into information networks thousands of miles away, how
come they can't load the program I just bought down the street?
They're no good for balancing a checking account, because after you buy one
there's nothing left in your checking account anyway.
Computer games are turning our children into brainless walking zombies.
And worst of all, the guy down the street has a better one than I do.
Stonehenge BBS [415] 479-8328
USComputer Lexicon
By Cornelius Unicorn
Beginner: A person who believes more than one-sixteenth of a computer
salesperson's spiel.
Advanced User: A person who has managed to remove a computer from its
packing materials.
Power User: A person who has mastered the brightness and contrast
controls on any computer's monitor.
Sales Associate: A former cheese-monger who has recently traded
mascarpone for MS-DOS
Sales Manager: Last week's new sales associate.
Consultant: A former sales associate who has mastered at least
one tenth of the D-BASE 3 Plus Manual.
Systems Integrator: A former consultant who understands the term
"AUTOEXEC.BAT".
Warranty: Disclaimer.
Service: Cursory examination, followed by the utterance of the phrase
"It can't be ours" and either of the words "hardware" or "software."
Support: The mailing of advertising literature to customers who have
returned a registration card.
Alpha Test Version: Too buggy to be released to the paying public.
Beta Test Version: Still too buggy to be released.
Release Version: Alternate pronunciation of "beta test version."
Enhanced: Less awful in some ways than the previous model, and
less likely to work as expected.
Convertible: Transformable from a second-rate computer to a first-rate
doorstop or paperweight. (Lexicoginal note: replaces the term
"junior.")
Upgraded: Didn't work the first time.
Upgraded and Improved: Didn't work the second time.
Fast (6MHz): Nowhere near fast enough.
Superfast (8MHz): Not fast enough.
Blindingly Fast (10MHz): Almost fast enough.
Astoundingly Fast (12MHz): Fast enough to work only intermittently.
Memory-Resident: Ready at the press of a key to disable any currently
running program.
Multitasking: A clever method of simultaneously slowing down the
multitude of computer programs that insist on running too fast.
Encryption: A powerful algorithmic encoding technique employed in the
creation of computer manuals.
Desktop Publishing: A system of software and hardware enabling users
to create documents with a cornucopia of typefaces and graphics and
the intellectual content of a Formica slab; often used in conjunction
with encryption.
High Resolution: Having nothing to do with graphics on an IBM-
compatible microcomputers.
FCC-Certified: Guaranteed not to interfere with radio or television
reception until you add the cable required to make it work.
American: Italian or Taiwanese, as in "American Telephone and Telegraph."
American-Made: Assembled in America from parts made abroad.
Windows: A slow-moving relation of the rodent family rarely seen
near computers but commonly found in specially marked packages of
display cards, turbo cards, and Grape-Nuts Cereal.
TopView: The official position of IBM brass that an abysmally slow
character-based multitasking program is the product of the future.
Shareware: Software usually distinguished by its awkward user
interfaces, skimpy manuals, lack of official user support, and
particularly its free distribution and upgrading via simple disk
copying; e.g., PC-DOS.
DOS-SHELL: An educational tool forcing computer users to learn new
methods of doing what they already can.
UNIX: Sterile experts who attempt to palm off bloated, utterly arcane,
and confusing operating systems on rational human beings.
EMS: Emergency Medical Service; often summoned in cases of apoplexy
induced by attempts to understand extended, expanded or enhanced
memory specifications.
Videotex: A moribund electronic service offering people the privilege
of paying to read the weather on their TV screens instead of having
Willard Scott read it to them free while they brush their teeth.
Artificial Intelligence: The amazing, human-like ability of a computer
program to understand that the letter y means "yes" and the letter n
means "no."
Electronic Mail: A communications system with built-in delays and
errors designed to emulate those of the United States Postal Service.
C-py Pr-t-ct--n: An obscenity unfit to print and fast disappearing
from common parlance.
Turbo Card: A device that increases an older-model computer's speed
almost enough to compensate for the time wasted in getting it to work.
Laser Printer: A xerographic copying machine with additional
malfunctioning parts.
Workstation: A computer or terminal slavishly linked to a mainframe
that does not offer game programs.
RISC: The gamble that a computer directly compatible with nothing else
on the planet may actually have decent software written for it
someday.
AUTOEXEC.BAT: A sturdy aluminum or wooden shaft used to coax AT
hard disks into performing properly.
Plotter: A terroristic hypodermic device used to inject graphic
representations of boring data into boring meetings.
Clone: One of the many advanced-technology computers IBM is beginning
to wish it had built.
CD-ROM: An optical device with storage sufficient to hold billions of
predictions claiming it will revolutionize the information industry.
IBM Product Centers: Historical landmarks forever memorializing the
concept of "list price only."
IBM: Somewhat like an IBM product; in current parlance, invariably
followed by the word "compatible."
IBM Compatible: Not IBM compatible.
Fully IBM Compatible: Somewhat IBM compatible, but won't run IBM
BASIC programs.
100% IBM Compatible: Compatible with most available hardware and
software, but not with the blockbusters IBM always introduces the day
after tomorrow.
Lap-Top: Smaller and lighter than the average secretary.
Portable: Smaller and lighter than the average refrigerator.
Transportable: Neither chained to a wall nor attached to an alarm
system.
Hard Disk: A device that allows users to delete vast quantities
of data with simple mnemonic commands.
Mouse: A peripheral originally christened "vermiform appendix" because
of its functional resemblance, renamed for its appropriateness as a
cat toy.
Printer: An electromechanical paper-shredding device.
Modem: A peripheral used in the unsuccessful attempt to get two
computers to communicate with each other.
Network: An electronic means of allowing more than one person at a
time to corrupt, trash, or otherwise cause permanent damage to useful
information.
Documentation: A perplexing linen-bound accessory resorted to only in
situations of dire need when friends and dealers are unavailable,
usually employed solely as a decorative bookend.
User-Friendly: Supplied with a full-color manual.
Very User-Friendly: Supplied with a disk and audiotape so the user
needn't bother with the full-color manual.
Extremely User-Friendly: Supplied with a mouse so that the user
needn't bother with the disk and audiotape, the full color manual, or
the program itself.
Easy to Learn: Hard to use.
Easy to Use: Hard to learn.
Easy to Learn and Use: Won't do what you want it to.
Powerful: Hard to learn and use.
Menu-Driven: Easy to learn.
Copy Protection: (1) A clever method of preventing incompetent pirates
from stealing software and legitimate customers from using it; (2) a
means of distinguishing honest users from thieves by preventing
larceny by the former but not by the latter.
Warranty: An unconditional guarantee that the program purchased
is actually included on the disk in the box.
Version 1.0: Buggier than Maine in June; eats data.
Version 1.1: Eats data only occasionally, upgrade free to avoid
litigation by disgruntled users of version 1.0.
Version 2.0: The version originally planned as the first release
(except for a couple of data-eating bugs that just won't seem to go
away), no free upgrades or the company would go bankrupt.
Version 3.0: The revision in the works when the company goes bankrupt.
Spreadsheet: A program that gives the user quick and easy access to a
wide variety of highly detailed reports based on highly inaccurate
assumptions.
Word Processor: Software that magically transforms its user into
a professional author.
Thought Processor: An electronic version of the intended outline
procedure that thinking people instantly abandon upon graduation from
high school.
Business Graphics: Popular with managers who understand neither
decimals, fractions, percentages, Roman numerals, but have more than a
passing acquaintance with pies and bars.
Database Manager: A program that allows the user to manipulate data in
every conceivable way except the absolutely essential one he or she
conceives of the day after entering 20 megabytes of raw information.
Project Manager: Software for generating fantasy scenarios of amazing
optimism; proven in computer firms, where it is extremely successful
at scheduling advertising campaigns for unavailable products.
Integrated Software: A single product that deftly performs hundreds of
functions the user never needs and awkwardly performs the half-dozen
he uses constantly.
Windows: A method of dividing a computer screen into two or more
unusably tiny portions.
DL-232 -- A New Standard
by Dave Lyons
(CompuCenter Iowa: JoeApple; CompuServe 72177,3233)
I may never understand how the designers of the RS-232 "standard"
for serial communication managed to use 25 wires where only 3 are
really necessary. Maybe they made a deal with the companies that
make cables, connectors, and switch boxes...I just don't know.
Well, I thought of a few things that the RS-232 standard lacks,
and since there are already so many extra signals, a few more can't
hurt anybody, right? Heck, let's go for 50-pin connectors and cables
and add the following new signals. (Just to make sure this isn't
compatible with any old equipment, all OLD signals are moved up one
pin number (Carrier Detect becomes 9 instead of 8, etc., and pin 25
goes to pin 1).
Pin Name Description
--- ---- -----------
26 XCAT Should be connected to chassis of devices. Used with
the next two signals, this provides protection
against cats who haven't learned not to walk on
floppy disks or serial equipment. This signal should
supply about 2000 volts (at a VERY low current level;
wouldn't want to HURT the cute little thing, just
teach it not to walk on anything in the computer
room).
27 CATGND Cat ground. Used with pin 26. This signal should be
connected to another part of the chassis or the
tabletop.
28 CTD Cat detect.
29 SD Self-destruct. This signals causes the device to
destroy itself.
30 SDACK Self-destruct acknowledge. Acknowledges that the
device has destroyed itself.
31 VADIC This signal indicates to a computer that the device
on the other end is a modem that uses VADIC protocol.
(Note: CompuCenter Iowa users should jumper this
signal to SD and then buy a decent modem.)
32 STBIT1 Stutter bits. With pin 33, sets the number of
"stutter bits" (0 to 3 of them) to be included before
each byte transmitted. This may reduce the number of
people who feel inferior to computer equipment by
showing them that computers have problems
communicating with each other.
33 STBIT2
34 CABR Cable ready. It's not enough to know that the Data
Set is ready (DSR) and the Data Terminal is read
(DTR). We also need to know that the CABLE
connecting them is ready.
35 GRR Gremlins ready. Not everybody knows it, but there are
little green guys inside most modern computer
equipment. Most of the time they sleep, but other
times they cause trouble. The next 6 signals are for
dealing with gremlins.
36 220A Used with pin 37, supplies 220 volt power for the
gremlins' air conditioning. On hot days when
gremlins can't sleep, applying power to these pins
may solve your problems.
37 220B
38 110H 110 volts, hot side. When the 220 volt power doesn't
help and gremlin problems persist, use this with pin
39 to supply 110 volts for the gremlins' TV and video
game center.
39 110N 110 volts, neutral side.
40 MOON Indicates the phase of the moon. Sometimes solves mysterious
problems.
41 LHI Pins 41 through 45 can be used to implement the
"like" protocol when the normal RTS/CTS protocol
isn't enough. This one means "Like HI" and is used
to establish a connection.
42 LHTY2 Like HI to You Too. Acknowledges pin 41.
43 LLTT Like Listen To This. Requests permission to send
data.
44 LOK Like OK. Grants permission to transmit data.
45 LWOW Like WOW. Acknowledges receipt of data.
46 HEY Pins 46 to 50 may be used to implement the "Eighties"
protocol when RTS/CTS and "Like" protocols won't do
the job. This signal is similar to RTS (Request to
Send).
47 NP No Problem. Acknowledges HEY.
48 HUH? Signals that data was not received correctly
(possibly wrong number of stutter bits).
49 YEAH Acknowledges data received.
50 KMG365 Like YEAH, but for avid Emergency One fans.
That makes 50! Let's hear your suggestions for MORE serial signals.
Maybe we can get 100 and REALLY make the cable manufacturers happy.
COMPUTER FACES
:-) Smiling, happy face; don't take me too seriously
B-) Above, but poster wears glasses or sunglasses
8-) Same as previous; also used to denote wide-eyed look
#:-) :-) done by someone with sort of matted hair
:-( Sad or angry face
@= Flame about nuclear war, power or weapons follows (mushroom cloud)
;-) Winking happy face (something said tongue-in-cheek)
:-P Tongue stuck out
:-b Same as previous
:-D Wider happy face (or mouth open too much)
:-o "Oh, nooooooo!" (a la Mr. Bill)
#:-o Same as previous
(:-) Messages dealing with bicycle helmets
<:-) Dumb questions
oo "Somebody's head-lights are on" messages
O>-<|= Messages of interest to women
;-) Wink ( take this message with a grain of salt)
|-( Late night messages
:^) Messages teasing people about their noses
:-{#} Messages teasing people about their braces
(:-# Message concerning something that shouldn't have been said...
(:-$ Message indicating person is ill...
(:-& Message indicating person is angry...
(:-* Kiss...
(:-( Message indicating person is VERY sad...
(:^( Message concerning people with broken noses
(:<) Message concerning blabber mouths
:-(=) Message about people with big teeth.
&:-) Message from a person with curly hair
@:-) Message from a person with wavy hair
?-( Message about people with a black eye.