00:00SPEAKER- The prophecy has come true.
00:01SPEAKER- Yes?
00:02SPEAKER- I got not one, but two pairs of sweat pants.
00:06SPEAKER- Sweat pants?
00:07SPEAKER- Sweat pants.
00:08SPEAKER- It's finally, this is legitimately a sweat pants tech pod.
00:11SPEAKER- I don't, I didn't own, I had a lot of like athletic pants,
00:14SPEAKERlike track pants and stuff,
00:15SPEAKERbut I didn't have any sweat pants before this Christmas.
00:18SPEAKER- Like we're talking the, what is that material?
00:20SPEAKERLike a terry cloth, just the traditional stretchy soft,
00:23SPEAKERlike the late eighties, early nineties,
00:26SPEAKERkind of creepy sweat pants, sweat pants?
00:28SPEAKER- I mean, there's a drawstring,
00:30SPEAKERthe legs are slightly tapered
00:32SPEAKERwith a little bit of an elastic at the cuff.
00:34SPEAKER- Okay, those are, that sounds very sweat pantsy.
00:37SPEAKER- I got two pairs, Gina and the kiddo got me
00:41SPEAKERa, the post game jogger from Fabletics,
00:44SPEAKERwhich is a fair pair of fancy ass sweat pants.
00:48SPEAKER- Okay.
00:49SPEAKER- But the, and they're very comfortable, they're snug,
00:52SPEAKERthey're, I would actually wear these out probably,
00:54SPEAKERthey have pockets so you could put a wallet
00:56SPEAKERand keys in perhaps.
00:57SPEAKER- Hmm, okay.
00:59SPEAKER- The other pair though are the coziest pants
01:03SPEAKERI've ever owned.
01:04SPEAKERThis is not a, this is not like a paid promotional bit
01:06SPEAKERor anything by the way, just so you know.
01:08SPEAKER- But important to clarify.
01:10SPEAKER- One of my mods at the other, at the Twitch community
01:14SPEAKERhad recommended these Uniqlo fleece lined,
01:16SPEAKERpile lined sweat pants is what they're called.
01:19SPEAKERAnd they have like fleecy, fleecy stuff
01:21SPEAKERinside the sweat pants.
01:23SPEAKER- Okay.
01:24SPEAKER- So it's like double insulation
01:25SPEAKERand they are the coziest pants I've ever owned.
01:27SPEAKER- I mean, Uniqlo is fancy enough
01:29SPEAKERand I don't even know if you can call them sweat pants,
01:31SPEAKERright, like they need some kind of slightly trendier,
01:34SPEAKERoh no, he's standing up to show off.
01:37SPEAKERAre you wearing them right now?
01:38SPEAKER- Fuck yeah, I'm wearing them right now.
01:39SPEAKER- Okay, I don't, do those, do those, those look nicer
01:41SPEAKERthan, I don't know, like call those sweat pants.
01:44SPEAKER- They're sweat pants, dog.
01:45SPEAKER- Technically they're sweat pants.
01:46SPEAKER- There's no, there's no structure to the waist,
01:48SPEAKERthere's no belt loops.
01:49SPEAKER- Okay, all right.
01:50SPEAKER- The pockets are fleece lined and they're cozy and warm.
01:53SPEAKER- And are they intended to be worn around the house?
01:56SPEAKERThat's the question.
01:58SPEAKERI think that was the primary intention behind the gift
02:01SPEAKERthat you would lounge in these, in your home,
02:03SPEAKERbecause if that's the case, I'm all for it.
02:05SPEAKER- Where else am I gonna, like,
02:07SPEAKERthere's nowhere else I would want to be,
02:09SPEAKERwell, there's a million places I would want to be right now,
02:11SPEAKERbut there's nowhere else I'm going
02:13SPEAKERfor at least the next six months, let's say.
02:16SPEAKER- Extenuating circumstances aside, let's say,
02:19SPEAKERwould these be out of dwarfs pants or not?
02:22SPEAKER- I would push the garbage in and out in these,
02:25SPEAKERlike I would embrace the neighborhood.
02:26SPEAKERI would probably not go to the grocery store.
02:28SPEAKER- That's about the perfect, I would say,
02:32SPEAKERmargin for sweat pants to exist in.
02:35SPEAKER- Yeah, like when we used to get the paper,
02:37SPEAKERI would get the paper with these.
02:39SPEAKER- Yeah, no farther than 50 feet from your house.
02:41SPEAKER- If I was going out to pick up breakfast or lunch
02:45SPEAKERand I was going someplace that had a drive-through,
02:47SPEAKERI would wear these, but if I had to go into the store,
02:49SPEAKERI would wear the other ones.
02:52SPEAKER- Do you think our Twitter handle is limiting our reach?
02:56SPEAKER- I mean, maybe, but the other good ones,
02:57SPEAKERlike we would have to put a lot of underscores
02:59SPEAKERto get anything else even approaching on brand.
03:01SPEAKER- That's true.
03:02SPEAKERI have to look it up to confirm it's @sweatpantstech.
03:05SPEAKER- Yeah, that's it.
03:06SPEAKERIt's a very active Twitter account.
03:07SPEAKERI look at it at least once a week.
03:08SPEAKER- We have been highly authentic
03:10SPEAKERto our Twitter brand until now.
03:12SPEAKER- We were thought leaders before the 2020 pandemic landed
03:16SPEAKERand everybody became about sweat pants and not just us.
03:19SPEAKER- I have to confess, if I were being true to form,
03:23SPEAKERit would be @gymshortstech?
03:26SPEAKER- Yeah, @athleticshorts.
03:27SPEAKER- @athleticshortstech.
03:29SPEAKER- You have a deep well of athletic shorts, I'm gonna say.
03:32SPEAKER- Yes, they're like sweat pants, except half as long.
03:37SPEAKER- See, but you live in an apartment-
03:39SPEAKER- We have to workshop that one a little bit more.
03:40SPEAKER- Look, you live in an apartment,
03:41SPEAKERso you're insulated on three sides
03:43SPEAKER'cause you have people above you too, right?
03:45SPEAKER- Yes.
03:46SPEAKER- See, in our house, we have no insulation on three sides,
03:49SPEAKERso it's cold here all the time.
03:51SPEAKER- Draft a little drafty.
03:52SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a breezy house.
03:55SPEAKERI looked at those.
03:57SPEAKERYou can get those cling film insulating plastic windows
04:02SPEAKERto put inside your windows for people who live in places
04:05SPEAKERthat it gets actually cold, like Minnesota.
04:07SPEAKERSo you make another pocket of air
04:09SPEAKERinside your triple pane windows.
04:12SPEAKERBut I was gonna get those for here
04:15SPEAKERsince we just have single pane windows
04:16SPEAKERin a lot of our house 'cause the people who built our house
04:19SPEAKERin the '50s were a-holes.
04:21SPEAKERSo, well, anyway, you have to strike back at them from 2020.
04:25SPEAKER- Yeah.
04:26SPEAKER- Round here, you wear the pants you want.
04:28SPEAKERThat's the TechPod promise.
04:31SPEAKER(laughing)
04:33SPEAKER(upbeat music)
04:45SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
05:01SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a TechPod."
05:04SPEAKERI'm Will.
05:04SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
05:05SPEAKER- Brad.
05:06SPEAKER- Hello.
05:07SPEAKER- The year-
05:08SPEAKER- Is 2021.
05:10SPEAKEROh, sorry.
05:10SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, happy new year.
05:12SPEAKER- I didn't know where you were going with that.
05:13SPEAKERI didn't know you were gonna get right into it.
05:14SPEAKER- Happy new year, man.
05:15SPEAKER- Hello, hi, happy new year to you and all.
05:17SPEAKER- Did you celebrate?
05:18SPEAKERDid you stay up late?
05:19SPEAKER- I was technically awake at midnight, yes, like barely.
05:23SPEAKER- That's unusual.
05:25SPEAKER- Half awake on the couch, let's say.
05:27SPEAKER- Okay.
05:28SPEAKER- I wouldn't say I was celebrating or anything.
05:31SPEAKER- We did, we played some games with some friends
05:34SPEAKERand then like watched the ball drop on the East Coast
05:37SPEAKERand then signed off and we're like,
05:41SPEAKERdid some stuff with the kiddo.
05:42SPEAKERAnd I spent, let's say, three or four hours yesterday
05:47SPEAKERon our Animal Crossing Island
05:48SPEAKERmaking a gigantic scavenger hunt,
05:50SPEAKERthinking that she and some of her friends would come over
05:52SPEAKERand they'd go dig.
05:53SPEAKERLike I buried gold nuggets and all sorts of good
05:56SPEAKERcostume stuff and some winter festival things and all that.
06:00SPEAKERAnd I built an incredibly elaborate like gnome.
06:03SPEAKERI've been collecting gnome statues for about six months
06:06SPEAKERto do this, not this particular day,
06:09SPEAKERbut like I wanted to do a scavenger hunt with the gnomes
06:10SPEAKER'cause the gnomes all stand there and they point forward.
06:14SPEAKER- Oh, those gnomes.
06:14SPEAKER- Yes, right.
06:15SPEAKER- I'll have a series of gnome statues that point
06:17SPEAKERand you follow the path and it'll be like a Zelda maze
06:19SPEAKERwhere you have to like follow the statue maze
06:21SPEAKERand you get to the end.
06:22SPEAKERThere's red herrings everywhere.
06:23SPEAKERI buried a bazillion like little bits of garbage,
06:26SPEAKERlike wasps nests and pieces of clay and sticks.
06:29SPEAKER- The more work you talk about putting into this,
06:32SPEAKERthe more I suspect there's gonna be a twist ending
06:33SPEAKERto the story.
06:34SPEAKER- So the twist ending is the kids got there last night.
06:36SPEAKERI was like, okay, it's time to start the scavenger hunt.
06:38SPEAKERThey're like, okay, where is it? Is it buried stuff?
06:41SPEAKERAnd I was like, yeah, it's all buried.
06:42SPEAKERAnd they were like, okay.
06:43SPEAKERAnd then instead of following the gnomes
06:45SPEAKERor any of the hints that I gave,
06:46SPEAKERthey just dug up every X on the island
06:49SPEAKERwith incredible thoroughness.
06:51SPEAKERLike they got in all the places that I'd built
06:53SPEAKERthe good hiding zones and everything.
06:54SPEAKERAnd they found everything in like 45 seconds.
06:57SPEAKERIt was done.
06:57SPEAKER- It's 'cause we don't care about your rules, dad.
07:00SPEAKER- Yeah.
07:01SPEAKER- We're crossing the way we want.
07:03SPEAKER- That's what you get for trying.
07:04SPEAKERThat's the lesson. Happy 2021.
07:06SPEAKER- That's right.
07:07SPEAKERYes. Anything goes in this,
07:09SPEAKERI started to say in this new decade,
07:11SPEAKERbut let's not get into that argument.
07:13SPEAKERI am not, I am not, I am not one of those,
07:15SPEAKERthe decade starts at 2021 or whatever type people.
07:19SPEAKER- Oh yeah. 'Cause to you, 2000 is the 10th 90.
07:23SPEAKER- Right.
07:24SPEAKER- 10 is, yeah, okay, we don't need to do this.
07:27SPEAKER- I am not part of the, you know,
07:29SPEAKER2000 is technically part of the 20th century crowd.
07:32SPEAKER- But it is, that is correct though.
07:34SPEAKER- I don't, yes, but it's not.
07:36SPEAKER- It's the 2000th year.
07:37SPEAKER- It's not worth it, is what I'm saying.
07:40SPEAKERI understand the technical argument.
07:41SPEAKER- Okay. I have a real question for you then.
07:46SPEAKERIf the Enterprise and the Super Star Destroyer Executor
07:50SPEAKERfought, who would win?
07:51SPEAKER- Okay, well, if the Enterprise was able to blow up
07:54SPEAKERthe shield generators next to the conning towers,
07:56SPEAKERthen I think it would level the playing field
07:58SPEAKERpretty significantly.
08:00SPEAKER- Uh-huh. They're just deflectors.
08:02SPEAKERThey're not even real shields.
08:03SPEAKERBaby shields for babies.
08:04SPEAKER- Ion cannons do not interact with the Enterprise's shields.
08:08SPEAKER- That's true.
08:09SPEAKER- I don't, this is all I have. I don't know.
08:11SPEAKER- Primitive snub fighters, Brad.
08:13SPEAKER- I don't have an answer.
08:15SPEAKERI don't have an answer.
08:16SPEAKER- Picard even answers this
08:17SPEAKERwhen the primitives come after them.
08:19SPEAKERIt's a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
08:21SPEAKERIt's primitive technology.
08:22SPEAKER- Just roll up with a mass driver and destroy both of them.
08:24SPEAKER'Cause just throw a rock at them at a significant portion
08:28SPEAKERof the speed of light and the whole conversation
08:32SPEAKERwill be over.
08:33SPEAKER- Just teleport out, you know.
08:36SPEAKERFire up the transporter and send a little anti-matter
08:40SPEAKERover there.
08:41SPEAKERDo they even have spacesuits in Star Wars?
08:43SPEAKERI don't think I've ever seen anybody wear a spacesuit
08:44SPEAKERexcept for like a weird alien here and there.
08:46SPEAKER- No, I don't think they do.
08:48SPEAKERLike there's that whole weird bit in "Empire Strikes Back"
08:51SPEAKERwhere they're on that asteroid
08:52SPEAKERjust kind of walking around in a cave with nothing.
08:55SPEAKER- Yeah. Well, there's the collection that Gary and Austin
09:03SPEAKERwrote for the short story collection
09:04SPEAKERhas a very good space worm story in it
09:07SPEAKERthat I can't remember who wrote.
09:08SPEAKER- Okay.
09:10SPEAKER- Look, it explains the problems with that,
09:12SPEAKERwith the mask in space.
09:13SPEAKER- I increasingly am of the opinion
09:15SPEAKERthat Star Wars is just Arthurian legend in space.
09:18SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems right.
09:19SPEAKER- And that it is not worth dissecting the technical
09:22SPEAKERor scientific aspects at all.
09:23SPEAKER- Absolutely correct. It's magic.
09:25SPEAKER- Yes. - It's just magic.
09:27SPEAKER- Yes, it's fucking knights and wizards
09:28SPEAKERrunning around with swords and magic.
09:30SPEAKERCome on.
09:31SPEAKER- You know, speaking of Star Wars,
09:34SPEAKERI remember a time when I was a youth about 10 years old
09:39SPEAKERand I remember thinking,
09:41SPEAKERoh man, "Return of the Jedi" came out two years ago.
09:43SPEAKERThey haven't said anything about a new one.
09:45SPEAKERSo I guess that's it for Star Wars
09:46SPEAKER'cause Darth Vader's dead, the whole thing's over, right?
09:49SPEAKERThe year was 1985, Brad.
09:51SPEAKER"Careless Whisper" by Wham!
09:53SPEAKERwas the number one pop single of the year.
09:55SPEAKER- "Return of the Jedi" came out in 1983.
09:58SPEAKER- Yeah, "Back to the Future" led the box office.
10:01SPEAKER- Did that come out in '85?
10:02SPEAKERMan, I feel old.
10:03SPEAKER- Nintendo had just released a limited batch
10:06SPEAKERof the US version of their Famicom system.
10:09SPEAKER- You know what?
10:10SPEAKERI'm sorry, I hate to backpedal for a second,
10:12SPEAKERbut I actually watched like 20 minutes
10:14SPEAKERof "Return of the Jedi" last night, randomly.
10:16SPEAKER- Wow, okay.
10:17SPEAKER- 'Cause I like to party around here.
10:18SPEAKER- Pretty good. It's a pretty good movie.
10:20SPEAKER- Yeah, but it happened to be the part right in the middle
10:23SPEAKERbetween the Tatooine part and the kind of intercut,
10:27SPEAKERyou know, like Ewoks/Tharomarune/Space Battle,
10:31SPEAKERlike big finale.
10:32SPEAKER- Yeah.
10:33SPEAKER- It was the lull in the middle.
10:34SPEAKER- Like the Dagobah/Spaceships bit?
10:36SPEAKER- Even after, it was literally after the Dagobah stuff,
10:38SPEAKERjust the, we're meeting around with the Falcon,
10:41SPEAKERjust like ugly matte painting of the Falcon,
10:44SPEAKERand we're on the desert, I mean, not the desert,
10:47SPEAKERthe jungle planet and stuff.
10:48SPEAKERLike the really dull part.
10:51SPEAKERAnd I feel like I saw some shades of the prequels in there.
10:57SPEAKER- Oh, I mean.
10:58SPEAKER- I was sort of starting to see, it's like, okay,
11:01SPEAKERhere is, as Lucas was making more money
11:03SPEAKERand kind of getting more unilateral control
11:05SPEAKERover all of this, like the tone
11:08SPEAKERand the presentation of it all.
11:10SPEAKERI was like, ah, parts of this sort of remind me of the,
11:14SPEAKERyou know what I mean?
11:15SPEAKERJust like the cadence of the delivery
11:16SPEAKERand the editing and stuff.
11:17SPEAKERI was like, this feels a little prequel-like in this part.
11:20SPEAKER- So the Nok, there's a through line
11:22SPEAKERthrough all of those movies up until the new,
11:25SPEAKERthe postquel, I think.
11:28SPEAKERAnd the through line through the Lucas ones is very clear.
11:32SPEAKER'Cause like at the point that "Return of the Jedi" was made,
11:35SPEAKERthey were making so much money on toys
11:37SPEAKERthat really the movie didn't matter at all.
11:40SPEAKERAnd the only reason he stopped making movies
11:42SPEAKERwas because he owned the rights to them.
11:44SPEAKERAnd he was like, I don't want to do this anymore.
11:46SPEAKEREven though the toys make a lot of money, I'm probably good.
11:48SPEAKER- Well, it also almost killed him.
11:49SPEAKERLike he ended up in the hospital with cardiac,
11:51SPEAKERcardiovascular problems.
11:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
11:54SPEAKER- That's apparently why he decided to cut it off
11:55SPEAKERat three.
11:56SPEAKER- Yeah, that makes sense.
11:57SPEAKERI mean, we didn't get to see what the wills looked like,
11:59SPEAKERI guess.
12:00SPEAKER- Oh, man.
12:02SPEAKER- I've been in the theater.
12:03SPEAKER- We never will.
12:04SPEAKER- I've been in the theater where he edited
12:08SPEAKER"Return of the Jedi."
12:09SPEAKERIt's the original THX theater up in San Rafael.
12:13SPEAKER- And is it on the ranch or?
12:15SPEAKER- No, no, no.
12:16SPEAKERIt's at what used to be Kernery Studios,
12:18SPEAKERwhich is 3210 or 3810 or something like that.
12:20SPEAKERYou can rent the studio.
12:21SPEAKERIt's like 600, 800 bucks, something.
12:23SPEAKERIt's not expensive.
12:23SPEAKER- By theater and by editing,
12:25SPEAKERdo you mean it's like a tiny working theater
12:27SPEAKERor it's not like a presentation theater?
12:29SPEAKER- It's like a private theater.
12:31SPEAKERIt's the theater probably where they showed dailies
12:33SPEAKERand stuff for the effects reels,
12:34SPEAKER'cause that's where the effects shop was.
12:36SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
12:36SPEAKER'Cause you edited in like an editing bay back then, right?
12:40SPEAKER- Well, so the theater had editing bay hook-ins
12:43SPEAKERso they could hook up an Avid or whatever the toaster,
12:46SPEAKERvideo toaster, whatever it was at the time.
12:49SPEAKER- Do you wanna?
12:51SPEAKERI'm trying to figure out how many minutes
12:52SPEAKERinto this episode we are.
12:54SPEAKERDo you wanna just talk about Lucasfilm for this episode?
12:58SPEAKER- I don't think I know enough about,
12:59SPEAKERI know people who know enough about Lucasfilm
13:01SPEAKERthat we could do that episode in the future, but I would.
13:03SPEAKER- Oh, that would be so,
13:04SPEAKERI'd absolutely want to sign up for that.
13:07SPEAKERI just, I feel like we're right on the cusp
13:10SPEAKERof either not having a time for our stated topic.
13:13SPEAKER- Oh no, we gotta talk about the stated topic.
13:15SPEAKERI'm very excited about this.
13:16SPEAKER- Okay, okay, let's table as Lucasfilm stuff
13:18SPEAKER'cause I would love to,
13:18SPEAKERif you know somebody that we get on here
13:20SPEAKERto really talk about that stuff, then.
13:21SPEAKER- Yeah, we can make that happen.
13:23SPEAKERWe should really make that happen, but.
13:25SPEAKER- So, it's 1985.
13:27SPEAKER- Yes, please start.
13:29SPEAKERThe year, there you go.
13:31SPEAKER- The year is 1985.
13:32SPEAKERCareless Whisper by Wham! is running up the charts.
13:36SPEAKERBack in the Future is the number one movie in theaters,
13:38SPEAKERand Nintendo just released a limited batch
13:41SPEAKERof the US version of their Famicom home entertainment system.
13:45SPEAKER- What's it gonna be called?
13:47SPEAKER- It's called the NES, it's the Nintendo Entertainment.
13:49SPEAKERIt turned out to be the most important console
13:50SPEAKERof all time, probably.
13:52SPEAKER- I should check that out.
13:52SPEAKER- They just rolled out like a few hundred to Sears,
13:55SPEAKERand they didn't really tell anybody
13:56SPEAKER'cause everybody was really skittish
13:57SPEAKERafter Atari fucked up the whole thing anyway.
13:59SPEAKER- Yes, the fabled test market.
14:02SPEAKER- Computer Chronicles is entering its fourth season.
14:06SPEAKERIs it?
14:07SPEAKERIt's about to.
14:08SPEAKER- Yeah, just to set this up.
14:11SPEAKERI guess this is an episode dictated by Algorithm,
14:15SPEAKERbecause I was on YouTube the other day,
14:17SPEAKERand the YouTube algorithm decided to serve me up
14:19SPEAKERan episode of the Computer Chronicles in my sidebar
14:23SPEAKERentitled Hard Disk Storage, 1985.
14:25SPEAKERAnd so I clicked on it and watched it.
14:27SPEAKERAnd I was like, "You know what?"
14:28SPEAKER- And you said it to me and you were like,
14:29SPEAKER"Dude, you have to watch this right now."
14:30SPEAKER- It's just like, what do you think?
14:31SPEAKERWell, I mean, that goes for every Computer Chronicles
14:33SPEAKERepisode, in fact, like the,
14:35SPEAKERI'm trying to think of what the law,
14:37SPEAKERthe Computer Chronicles law is.
14:39SPEAKERThere is a, hmm.
14:44SPEAKERI'm trying to work this out in my head.
14:46SPEAKERThere's an inverse relationship
14:47SPEAKERbetween the newness of a Computer Chronicles episode
14:49SPEAKERand the dude, you have to watch this mess of it.
14:52SPEAKERLike the older it is, the more it's like,
14:53SPEAKER"Dude, look at this."
14:55SPEAKER- Yeah, so we talked about doing,
14:58SPEAKERI think we're gonna try to do this more regularly
15:00SPEAKER'cause it's kind of fun.
15:00SPEAKERBut like, this is the first episode of Computer Chronicles
15:04SPEAKERwhere they were talking about hard drive technologies
15:07SPEAKERand like the hard drive at this point
15:10SPEAKERfor a personal computer, meaning a small,
15:14SPEAKERbefore hard drives got personal computer size,
15:18SPEAKERthey were like the size of a washing machine
15:21SPEAKERwith huge spinning disks in them.
15:22SPEAKERAnd it was like an industrial thing
15:24SPEAKERthat had to be moved in on a forklift.
15:25SPEAKER- Yes, that's actually one of the things
15:26SPEAKERI wrote down in my notes here,
15:27SPEAKERbut just real quick, more broadly,
15:29SPEAKERjust we might serialize this idea of people like it,
15:32SPEAKERor if people hate this,
15:33SPEAKERthis is probably the only time we'll do it.
15:34SPEAKERBut like, the idea is basically like all these episodes
15:36SPEAKERare on YouTube and archive.org.
15:37SPEAKERSo we'll put the YouTube link to this episode
15:41SPEAKERin the show notes.
15:42SPEAKERAnd if you want, you maybe might work better to watch it
15:45SPEAKERbefore you listen to the rest of the episode.
15:47SPEAKER- Or after, I don't know.
15:48SPEAKER- I mean, I think we'll give it,
15:51SPEAKERI'm gonna endeavor to give enough context
15:53SPEAKERso you know what we're talking about.
15:54SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.
15:54SPEAKEROh yes, I guess yes, actually, not the original idea.
15:57SPEAKERIdeally, this works as a standalone podcast
15:59SPEAKERwithout forcing somebody to watch a 30 minute TV show.
16:03SPEAKERBut the idea is basically just like,
16:05SPEAKERhey, let's go back and watch this crazy time capsule
16:07SPEAKERof PC tech and kind of run through it.
16:10SPEAKER- Yeah, and I think we might try it with magazines too.
16:14SPEAKER'Cause there's a bunch of little computer magazines
16:16SPEAKERon archive.org and--
16:18SPEAKER- You reminded me that I had completely forgotten.
16:19SPEAKERYou had this idea like six months ago
16:21SPEAKERthat we would do this with like episode,
16:23SPEAKERI mean, issues of Byte and stuff like that.
16:25SPEAKER- Byte and Computer, Computer Shopper and PC and Max PC.
16:29SPEAKERYeah, go back to that. - Just PC week.
16:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
16:32SPEAKER- And stuff like that.
16:33SPEAKERBut we kind of ended up just doing
16:34SPEAKERthis Computer Chronicles version first.
16:36SPEAKER- I think the Computer Chronicles, this one is too good.
16:38SPEAKERSo the topic is hard drives, hard disk storage
16:42SPEAKERis what it's called.
16:43SPEAKERAnd December 17th, 1985 is the first air date.
16:47SPEAKERAnd we have a link in the show notes for real.
16:50SPEAKERWe usually say we do that and then forget to do it.
16:52SPEAKERAnd then, but so they're talking about,
17:00SPEAKERthere's a way that people who talk about technology,
17:03SPEAKERand I know we do this too, talk about stuff that's new,
17:06SPEAKERthat is like default, a little skeptical
17:08SPEAKERto here's all of the ways that things that are similar
17:11SPEAKERto this have gone bad in the past.
17:13SPEAKERAnd it is, this is the earliest representation of this.
17:18SPEAKER'Cause like Stuart, I think it's Shafay, I don't know.
17:22SPEAKER- Stuart Shafay is the host, yeah.
17:24SPEAKER- Yeah, talks at the beginning about the hard drives as,
17:30SPEAKERlike a hard drive is for me,
17:33SPEAKERlike I got my first computer that was mine in like 20,
17:36SPEAKERin like 1993, I guess, '92.
17:41SPEAKERAnd for me, that machine came with a hard drive.
17:44SPEAKERThe stuff from the early '80s that didn't have hard drives,
17:46SPEAKERthat basically worked off the floppy drives,
17:48SPEAKERlike Apple IIs and IBM XTs and IBM PCs and stuff like that
17:52SPEAKERwere before my time for all intents and purposes.
17:57SPEAKERSo it's really fun to watch this conversation of a guy
18:01SPEAKERwho is deeply skeptical of this emerging technology,
18:05SPEAKERthe hard disk drive.
18:07SPEAKER- Yeah, to put it in context, the 10 megabytes
18:10SPEAKERis the entry-level hard drive talked about in this episode.
18:13SPEAKER- And I don't think they gave prices, did they?
18:16SPEAKER- They did talk prices for some of the kind of
18:17SPEAKERexternal backup systems and, oh, you know,
18:21SPEAKERthey mentioned 395 as a price point for something,
18:25SPEAKERbut again, some of these hard drives were sort of included
18:27SPEAKERin backup systems that were adding to the price there,
18:30SPEAKERbut it was, oh, you know, I think he said $1,000
18:32SPEAKERa year prior had been the cost of a 10 megabyte hard drive.
18:35SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems right.
18:37SPEAKER- But yes, you're right.
18:38SPEAKERThey do not absolutely treat the hard drive
18:41SPEAKERas an essential part of the personal computer.
18:44SPEAKERThey are constantly questioning the people they bring on
18:47SPEAKERin the context of what would a home user do
18:50SPEAKERwith this much space?
18:52SPEAKERThey literally ask the question four or five times
18:54SPEAKERin different ways, like what are some of the applications
18:56SPEAKERyou can do now that you have this much space?
18:58SPEAKERAnd the hard drive makers don't really have an answer.
19:00SPEAKERIt's like, I'd store a bigger database, of course.
19:03SPEAKER- You can copy your database,
19:05SPEAKERkeep a backup copy of your database.
19:07SPEAKER- Like, I mean, obviously this is very primitive
19:09SPEAKERin computing, home computing terms,
19:10SPEAKERbut like they don't even have like multimedia oriented
19:13SPEAKERanswers 'cause they're kind of wasmo
19:15SPEAKERlike desktop publishing industry at that point yet.
19:17SPEAKERWe like, they weren't quite there, right?
19:19SPEAKER- It was 1980, like, yeah, I mean, at this point,
19:23SPEAKERso at my parents' business in 1985,
19:26SPEAKERthe only person that had a computer on their desk
19:28SPEAKERwas the person who did inventory stuff.
19:31SPEAKERAnd I think that that was just so they could print out
19:34SPEAKERthe inventory sheets, not that they were keeping
19:37SPEAKERthe inventory on the computer.
19:38SPEAKER- Yes.
19:39SPEAKER- Because it was like viewed as unreliable.
19:41SPEAKER- Finally, toward the end of the episode,
19:43SPEAKERone of the guys that they brought on that makes,
19:45SPEAKERor from a company that makes the hard drives,
19:47SPEAKERcame up with something of an answer to that question,
19:49SPEAKERwhich was basically like, well,
19:51SPEAKERsay you're doing cash management for your company.
19:53SPEAKERNow you won't have to access the mainframe
19:55SPEAKERto use that application because you can store
19:57SPEAKERthe cash management application on your personal computer.
19:59SPEAKERLike that was the best you could come up with,
20:01SPEAKERwas like, ah, you can balance a budget more easily with this.
20:04SPEAKER- Well, and at that point, too,
20:06SPEAKERyou're talking about a pretty big company
20:07SPEAKERif they have like a mini computer or a mainframe
20:10SPEAKERor something like that, like a small VAX or whatever.
20:12SPEAKER- Yeah, VAX is what they mentioned specifically.
20:15SPEAKER- It's, the other thing that was shocking about this to me,
20:17SPEAKERand I had forgotten about this,
20:19SPEAKERthis is from a period of time
20:21SPEAKERwhen the personal computer market was very fragmented still.
20:27SPEAKER- Yeah.
20:28SPEAKER- In that, like you would buy,
20:30SPEAKERif you bought a computer from the wrong company,
20:31SPEAKERyou'd have a different operating system
20:33SPEAKERand it wouldn't work with the one
20:34SPEAKERthat you bought from IBM or whatever.
20:36SPEAKER- Yeah, and this was about, I'd say 70, 80% focused
20:39SPEAKERon the IBM AT and XT, but then they have like sort of,
20:42SPEAKERhere's our Macintosh segment because that's separate.
20:44SPEAKERAnd then I got, I don't think they got
20:45SPEAKERinto any other company's systems on this one.
20:49SPEAKER- They didn't talk about other company systems
20:51SPEAKERon this one, except there were some news things.
20:52SPEAKERBut the thing that they did do,
20:56SPEAKERlike at other episodes from this time period,
20:59SPEAKERthey would have talked about other like tandy color computers
21:02SPEAKERand stuff like that, I think.
21:03SPEAKER- Right.
21:04SPEAKER- The XT was such a monolith at this point
21:08SPEAKERthat like they were reporting on price decreases
21:11SPEAKERand increases of that manufacturer's personal computer.
21:14SPEAKERNot like, it wasn't like, hey, the Intel CPU in this
21:17SPEAKERis gonna be reduced in price by 20%.
21:19SPEAKERSo the price of your personal computers is gonna go down.
21:22SPEAKERIt's like IBM is thinking about decreasing the price
21:25SPEAKERby 20% of this computer, which is just like,
21:31SPEAKERand the competitor for these newfangled hard disk drives
21:35SPEAKERwas the IBM, what do they call it?
21:37SPEAKERThe hard card?
21:38SPEAKER- Yes, the hard card.
21:40SPEAKER- I had to look that up.
21:41SPEAKERIt's an expansion card for IBM XTs,
21:44SPEAKERwhich like they didn't have an add an IDE
21:47SPEAKERor obviously they didn't have SATA,
21:49SPEAKERbut they didn't have any kind of IDE bus on those computers.
21:51SPEAKERSo in order to add permanent storage,
21:54SPEAKERyou put a slot on, a card and a slot.
21:57SPEAKERAnd on that slot was mounted a hard disk platters
22:00SPEAKERand IO ads.
22:01SPEAKER- That was the sales pitch that the guy gave was,
22:04SPEAKERI guess there were other ways to get a hard drive
22:06SPEAKERinto a PC at that point,
22:07SPEAKERbut it required like a technician to install
22:09SPEAKERand that kind of thing.
22:10SPEAKERAnd this was, this is literally,
22:12SPEAKERif you wanna envision it, it's just like an expansion card.
22:14SPEAKERLike you would put in any PC long enough
22:16SPEAKERto also have a hard drive bolted onto it.
22:18SPEAKER- Well, and it had both the power supply
22:21SPEAKERand the data interface on that card.
22:23SPEAKERAnd these are XT cards.
22:25SPEAKERThese are pre ISA.
22:26SPEAKER- I was gonna ask if that,
22:27SPEAKERokay, I didn't know when ISA came about.
22:30SPEAKER- So ISA started around,
22:31SPEAKERlike the first computer I had with ISA slots
22:33SPEAKERwas the was a 386 probably.
22:35SPEAKER- Okay, that sounds--
22:36SPEAKER- And I don't think I ever opened up that
22:38SPEAKER'cause I inherited like one of my uncles
22:41SPEAKERreplaced all the computers with PC juniors at his office,
22:44SPEAKERXTs with PC juniors.
22:46SPEAKERAnd the XTs he gave to family members
22:49SPEAKERor sold them to everybody
22:50SPEAKERfor like a hundred bucks a piece or something.
22:52SPEAKERSo we ended up with an XT in like 19,
22:54SPEAKERaround this time probably.
22:56SPEAKER- Okay.
22:57SPEAKER- And I didn't like, you couldn't do anything with it.
23:00SPEAKERIt was so, it was like we had a couple of pirated versions
23:05SPEAKERof like micro pros simulator games,
23:08SPEAKERlike M1 tank platoon, M1A1 tank platoon
23:10SPEAKERand stuff like that.
23:13SPEAKERAnd that was pretty much it.
23:14SPEAKERLike I tried word processing, we didn't have a printer.
23:17SPEAKERSo like writing a paper on it just meant
23:19SPEAKERthat you then had this thing in the computer
23:22SPEAKERthat you couldn't do anything with.
23:24SPEAKERSo there was no reason to even learn how to type.
23:27SPEAKERI never even opened that case, I guess is what I'm saying.
23:29SPEAKERLike I never saw what the inside of that computer
23:31SPEAKERlooked like, it's the only computer I've ever owned
23:32SPEAKERthat I didn't take apart.
23:34SPEAKER- So this was, I mean to get too far afield
23:36SPEAKERof the topic here, but I guess this must've been
23:38SPEAKERlike directly before Compaq kicked off
23:40SPEAKERthe kind of clone revolution, is that right?
23:43SPEAKER- It was probably a little bit,
23:45SPEAKERI mean, HP and Compaq were definitely getting ready
23:47SPEAKERto get into that market.
23:49SPEAKERIt didn't become a big deal until the early '90s.
23:52SPEAKER- Okay.
23:52SPEAKER- Like Windows 3.1 was when people started having computers
23:56SPEAKERin their home that were Windows computers in my,
24:01SPEAKERlike DOS 5 and Windows 3.0
24:04SPEAKERwere when that stuff started happening.
24:06SPEAKERIt really wasn't until 3.1 and the DX processors, the 486.
24:10SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, specifically I'm thinking about
24:11SPEAKERthe transition from IBM being the whole market
24:14SPEAKERto IBM compatible becoming the market, you know?
24:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, at this point,
24:18SPEAKERthese were still phenomenally expensive devices too.
24:20SPEAKERLike an IBM XT was probably a $3,000 computer new.
24:24SPEAKER- Yeah, they mentioned at one point in this episode,
24:26SPEAKERlike the cheapest personal computer you can get
24:28SPEAKERon the market at this point is like 1,500.
24:29SPEAKERAnd that's, you know, again, that's 1,500 in 1985 dollars.
24:33SPEAKER- Yeah, so like you're looking at like used car money,
24:35SPEAKERlike nice used car money for a good PC at that time.
24:39SPEAKER- Right, right.
24:40SPEAKER- You get a Cadillac or a PC you choose.
24:42SPEAKER- Yeah, but yeah, like talking about that skepticism
24:46SPEAKERat the beginning where they were like,
24:47SPEAKERdo people really need these things?
24:50SPEAKER- I thought it was funny that the co-host Gary Kildall,
24:53SPEAKERwhich first of all, I was like,
24:54SPEAKERevery time I watched the computer chronicles
24:56SPEAKERand he's on there, I'm like,
24:57SPEAKERwhy does that name sound so familiar?
24:59SPEAKERAnd I started to Google him and I was like,
25:00SPEAKERoh, he is the author of CPM, which was kind of,
25:04SPEAKERit's a very old, was it 8086 compatible or IBM compatible?
25:11SPEAKERI don't know what on what level it was,
25:13SPEAKERit's an operating system, I don't know.
25:13SPEAKER- It was a disc operating system that wasn't MS-DOS.
25:17SPEAKER- Right, but I don't know what level it was compatible.
25:20SPEAKERLike, I don't know if it was specifically an IBM thing
25:21SPEAKERor if it ran on any 8086 machine, I'm not clear on.
25:25SPEAKERAnyway, the point is CPM is like in some ways,
25:27SPEAKERthe basis of DOS.
25:30SPEAKERAnd anyway, he got around and did other stuff,
25:35SPEAKERincluding the show at the same time,
25:36SPEAKERlike obviously a pretty important figure
25:38SPEAKERin computing history.
25:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it seemed like they wrote CPM
25:42SPEAKERfor pretty much everything that you could run
25:46SPEAKERthat you would need that for.
25:47SPEAKER- Right.
25:48SPEAKER- This is the other weird thing about this time,
25:49SPEAKERis when IBM shipped the PC,
25:53SPEAKERthey shipped it without an OS.
25:55SPEAKERSo you had to buy an OS as an option,
25:59SPEAKERwhich I don't know if that was like,
26:01SPEAKER'cause they just assume people are gonna pirate their OSes?
26:06SPEAKERI don't understand why you,
26:08SPEAKERlike that computer would be useless
26:09SPEAKERwithout a way to read discs.
26:11SPEAKER- I just assumed the business model
26:12SPEAKERhad not been fully hammered out yet.
26:14SPEAKERAnd like the operating system, I would guess like they,
26:17SPEAKERIBM probably saw the market
26:19SPEAKERas a hardware commodity market, right?
26:21SPEAKERLike software was an afterthought, right?
26:23SPEAKERIt's like, you're in the business of selling hardware, right?
26:25SPEAKER- Yeah.
26:26SPEAKER- And like what you do with it is up to you.
26:28SPEAKERYou need to go get your own operating system,
26:30SPEAKERfigure that out yourself.
26:31SPEAKERAnd like stuff like this,
26:33SPEAKERlike single individual people were out there
26:35SPEAKERwriting operating systems for the stuff
26:37SPEAKERand selling it at this point.
26:39SPEAKERSo weird thing.
26:40SPEAKER- Like millions of dollars selling disc,
26:44SPEAKERlike literally a piece of software
26:45SPEAKERto read and write from discs.
26:47SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, like he's kind of,
26:49SPEAKERhe's kind of the dry technically minded counterpart
26:51SPEAKERto Stuart Shafay's like very hosty kind of persona.
26:55SPEAKER- But so Stuart is a technical guy too.
26:58SPEAKER- He totally is, he totally is.
26:59SPEAKERBut he's got the host voice and Gary is much more
27:02SPEAKERjust like over here, rattling off tech facts all the time.
27:04SPEAKERBut anyway, he brought up, I laughed
27:07SPEAKERbecause like practically the first thing he said
27:08SPEAKERabout hard drives was his concern
27:10SPEAKERabout all the mechanical problems
27:11SPEAKERthat come along with a spinning disc.
27:13SPEAKER- Yep.
27:14SPEAKER- Such as ball bearings wearing out or head crashes
27:16SPEAKERor like all the other mechanical problems
27:19SPEAKERthat can happen with that sort of thing.
27:20SPEAKERAnd it's like, I was just like, oh, you mean all the things
27:22SPEAKERthat we still worry about with hard drives.
27:25SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I feel like bearings wearing out
27:27SPEAKERis less of a problem these days.
27:29SPEAKER- That one less so, but still like mechanical failure
27:32SPEAKERis still a constant fear with hard drives, right?
27:34SPEAKER35 years later, like it seems like that's never going away.
27:37SPEAKER- I mean, I think the lesson of the last 10 years for me
27:41SPEAKERwith the shift SSDs even is that we're just gonna shift
27:44SPEAKERone way of failing for another new way of failing.
27:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, like I remember when SSDs came out,
27:50SPEAKERI was like, oh, thank God, no more mechanical failure.
27:52SPEAKERAnd now it's like, oh, these lose data
27:54SPEAKERif they're not powered for more than like a year
27:57SPEAKERand they can only be written to so many times
27:59SPEAKERand then they're useless.
28:00SPEAKERIt's like, okay, great, nothing is perfect.
28:03SPEAKER- Did you ever go to a computer show in this timeframe?
28:07SPEAKER- No, so we didn't, I mean, my family didn't get a computer
28:10SPEAKERuntil '94, I think is the year.
28:12SPEAKER- Okay, so we were pretty late in the game.
28:15SPEAKERLike ISA was the legacy slot by the time we got a computer,
28:18SPEAKERlike our first computer had a visa local bus slot in it.
28:22SPEAKER- Oh, wow, okay.
28:23SPEAKER- We were a year off from Pentiums or less,
28:27SPEAKERI think by the time we got here.
28:27SPEAKER- Yeah, you were almost to PCI time by that point.
28:30SPEAKER- Yeah.
28:30SPEAKER- Probably into PCI time by that point.
28:32SPEAKERSo I went to, my dad and I went to a computer show
28:36SPEAKERat the VFW hall in Bristol when I was probably,
28:40SPEAKERlike it was probably a few years after this,
28:40SPEAKERit was probably like late '80s, early '90s,
28:43SPEAKERbut it was before we bought the Wang.
28:46SPEAKERAnd it was like a gym, it was a big ballroom type gym
28:52SPEAKERwith like hardwood floors, like dancing floors.
28:55SPEAKERAnd there were just a bunch of six foot folding tables
28:59SPEAKERand guys that were dressed just like these guys on TV,
29:02SPEAKERlike bearded computer nerds wearing beige suits
29:07SPEAKERand with like tubs with Ziploc bags full of software.
29:13SPEAKERSo like the Ziploc bags, and this wasn't like rip off,
29:16SPEAKERthis wasn't pirated software, it was just like,
29:18SPEAKERthey made their software, they put the floppies
29:20SPEAKERin a Ziploc with an instruction manual.
29:23SPEAKERAnd then they had a label printer that would print the label
29:26SPEAKERon the front of the Ziploc bag.
29:27SPEAKERAnd they were always weird shaped Ziplocs.
29:29SPEAKERThey were like tall, skinny,
29:30SPEAKERlike almost like comic book packing bags,
29:34SPEAKERlike comic book size.
29:35SPEAKERSo they were vertical oriented.
29:36SPEAKERThey would fit three and a half or you could get,
29:38SPEAKERyou could usually get it on three and a half
29:39SPEAKERfor five and a quarter disks.
29:40SPEAKERProbably five and a quarter disks at that point
29:42SPEAKERwouldn't be my guess.
29:43SPEAKER- Yes.
29:44SPEAKER- It was a weird time.
29:45SPEAKER- Very grassroots.
29:46SPEAKERLike that, I mean, that to me is like a whole vibe
29:48SPEAKERor aesthetic I would say at this point of like that early.
29:51SPEAKERLike I wrote that down in the notes when I was watching this
29:53SPEAKERof what I wrote verbatim is the show is so squarely situated
29:58SPEAKERin the era of pocket protectors and business suits
30:00SPEAKERand beige everything.
30:02SPEAKER- Beige suits, man.
30:03SPEAKER- There was just, there was no culture or style
30:06SPEAKERin computing whatsoever back then.
30:07SPEAKERIt was purely just a bunch of engineers
30:09SPEAKERand business people running the entire thing.
30:11SPEAKERYou know, like the era of the, like, you know,
30:13SPEAKERthe programmer, like the more recent kind of like jock
30:17SPEAKERsort of takeover of the tech industry
30:19SPEAKERwas just like unheard of at that point.
30:21SPEAKERYou know, it was purely nerds all the way down.
30:24SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I feel like there was probably
30:27SPEAKERa fair amount of substance abuse at this time.
30:29SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, of course.
30:30SPEAKERI mean, that'll happen anywhere.
30:31SPEAKERI mean, but you know, like you look at this
30:35SPEAKERand it's just, it's chronically terminally uncool, right?
30:40SPEAKERI mean, but it's cool because of that to me,
30:42SPEAKERlike I love that whole vibe.
30:44SPEAKERYou know, like all the companies are just named
30:46SPEAKERlike Plus Developments and Priam and like just, you know,
30:51SPEAKEReverything is like named by engineers
30:53SPEAKERand like signed by engineer, you know what I mean?
30:55SPEAKER- And the logos are all like a series of horizontal lines
30:58SPEAKERin different arrangements and color patterns and yeah.
31:01SPEAKER- But again, like, you know, we touched on it before,
31:03SPEAKERlike what are the applications
31:04SPEAKERthat you could use a computer for back then
31:06SPEAKERon a small scale, it was like balancing your budget
31:08SPEAKERand like running payroll and stuff like that, you know,
31:11SPEAKERit was not any of the cool stuff
31:13SPEAKERthat people use computers for now.
31:15SPEAKER- Well, I mean, they played games, Brad.
31:17SPEAKER- That's true.
31:19SPEAKER- So the thing that, like the thing that,
31:22SPEAKERone of the things that's fascinating to me about this show
31:24SPEAKERat this time period is that like, this is,
31:28SPEAKERthese computers are, I guess you could open up IBM PCs,
31:33SPEAKERbut like there's even a segment in the Mac,
31:35SPEAKERin the what's going on with hard drives on Mac,
31:38SPEAKERwhere they're talking about a product
31:40SPEAKERthat you can add to the Macintosh
31:41SPEAKERand there to the Apple too, it's pre-Macintosh.
31:44SPEAKER- Oh, I thought it was the Mac that they were talking about.
31:45SPEAKER- Was it the Mac?
31:46SPEAKER- Yeah, it's got a screen built into it so that it has--
31:48SPEAKER- Okay.
31:49SPEAKER- In fact, they showed the GUI as well, so yes.
31:51SPEAKER- Okay, so sorry.
31:52SPEAKER- But it was the original Mac,
31:52SPEAKERit was like the original black and white Mac though.
31:54SPEAKER- The vertical one, right?
31:55SPEAKER- Yes, the HyperDrive is the name of the product.
31:58SPEAKER- Yeah, so the HyperDrive is the first product
32:00SPEAKERthat Apple allows you to add to your Mac.
32:03SPEAKER- Like third party, right?
32:04SPEAKER- Third party, yeah.
32:05SPEAKER- Without doing the warranty.
32:08SPEAKER- Yeah, which is like the idea
32:10SPEAKERthat opening your computer could void the warranty.
32:13SPEAKERI remember it's Compaq and some of the other low-end OEMs
32:17SPEAKERtried to get that e-machines and some of those guys
32:19SPEAKERtried to do the sticker thing
32:21SPEAKERwhere they would put the sticker on and say like,
32:23SPEAKERremoving the sticker voids your warranty or stuff like that
32:25SPEAKERand then the courts threw all that stuff out.
32:27SPEAKERBut at this period of time,
32:27SPEAKERwe were a long way from, we've been challenging that.
32:29SPEAKERSo like the fact that there's an episode of this show
32:32SPEAKERabout add-ins from a time when you couldn't really,
32:37SPEAKERlike there was no provision for adding in outside of,
32:41SPEAKERit's not like those IBM slots were industry standard.
32:43SPEAKERThey were just whatever the IBM engineers wanted to do
32:46SPEAKERto add stuff to the computer
32:47SPEAKERthat they could sell as an add-on later.
32:50SPEAKERLike there's no ecosystem at this point.
32:52SPEAKERIt's just a series of computers that you can buy
32:54SPEAKERand maybe screw some stuff into.
32:57SPEAKER- Just like just bespoke kind of one-off add-ons, right?
33:00SPEAKERAnd like stuff that people are coming up with
33:01SPEAKERand selling on their own,
33:02SPEAKERbut it's not some institutionalized like,
33:04SPEAKERoh, here, this is the standard slot
33:05SPEAKERthat you design against and blah, blah, blah.
33:07SPEAKERIt's like they pointed out, excuse me,
33:09SPEAKERthat hyperdrive still took like an hour to install
33:12SPEAKERby a technician.
33:13SPEAKERLike you couldn't just buy it and do it yourself.
33:15SPEAKERLike you had to get somebody to do it.
33:17SPEAKERAlso, I just pulled it up on Wikipedia
33:18SPEAKERand that hyperdrive was $2,795.
33:21SPEAKER- And 10 megs?
33:23SPEAKER- 10, so yeah, it's a 10 megabyte hard drive.
33:26SPEAKERI'm trying to find,
33:29SPEAKERthey talked about it as if it had more
33:30SPEAKERthan a hard drive in it.
33:32SPEAKER- It has power supply and disk controller too, yeah.
33:35SPEAKER- Disk controller, okay.
33:36SPEAKERI thought they talked almost like it added more memory
33:38SPEAKERor something as well, but I'm not seeing that here.
33:42SPEAKEROh, I guess you're right.
33:43SPEAKERI guess it is just a hard drive.
33:44SPEAKER- It might've had more memory in the form of cache,
33:47SPEAKERwhich they maybe wouldn't have known what to deal with
33:49SPEAKERor do with at that point.
33:50SPEAKER- It says that, Wikipedia says that it had to plug directly
33:53SPEAKERinto the 68,000 processor socket.
33:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
33:56SPEAKER- Whatever that means, so.
33:57SPEAKER- Yeah, it's just, the whole thing is bonkers.
34:00SPEAKER- Yeah, like it's crazy that they were coming up
34:02SPEAKERwith stuff like that.
34:04SPEAKERLife finds a way, data finds a way.
34:06SPEAKER- Well, so they were talking about 10 and 20 meg disks.
34:10SPEAKER- Yeah, like the 60 is the biggest
34:13SPEAKERthey mentioned on this episode, but that's like--
34:16SPEAKER- These are, what would you call this?
34:20SPEAKERThis is like a full height.
34:22SPEAKERSo like a CD-ROM drive that you're familiar with,
34:24SPEAKERwhich is probably the biggest five and a quarter inch thing
34:27SPEAKERmost people are familiar with.
34:28SPEAKERI think a CD-ROM drive is a one quarter height slot,
34:32SPEAKERtechnically, 'cause I feel like these drives
34:34SPEAKERare either three or four CD-ROM drives tall.
34:39SPEAKER- They take one apart in the episode and it is tall.
34:41SPEAKERIt is a chonky box.
34:44SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a big boy.
34:46SPEAKERThey explicitly have to state, hey, we opened this one up
34:50SPEAKERso you can see what it looks like on the inside,
34:52SPEAKERbut you shouldn't do this 'cause if you do this,
34:53SPEAKERit'll destroy the hardware, which is really funny.
34:57SPEAKER'Cause everybody knows don't open your hard drive
34:59SPEAKER'cause the magic gets out, but also, damn.
35:04SPEAKER- But then they kind of went into detail about why.
35:06SPEAKERLike I'm shocked.
35:07SPEAKERLike I know this was on public television
35:09SPEAKERand computing was dominated
35:11SPEAKERby technically minded people back then,
35:13SPEAKERbut I'm still like shocked at how much detail
35:15SPEAKERthey go into on the show.
35:17SPEAKERLike they're talking about RAM at the beginning
35:19SPEAKERin the intro and like killed all just mentions like,
35:22SPEAKERoh, you're not gonna see RAM expansion cards
35:24SPEAKERonce we get to 32 bit processors
35:26SPEAKERbecause the address space is so big.
35:28SPEAKERIt's like, if you're talking about memory addressing
35:31SPEAKERin the intro of this like ostensibly like public facing show,
35:35SPEAKERyou know what I mean?
35:36SPEAKERLike what audience is this playing to
35:38SPEAKERthat you're talking about stuff like that?
35:39SPEAKERYou know, they talk about, they get into like,
35:41SPEAKERthey get into clean rooms and like the vacuum effect
35:43SPEAKERinside the hard disk and what causes head crashes
35:46SPEAKERand like the Bernoulli effect, which we'll get to.
35:49SPEAKERLike it's just, it's super engineering heavy.
35:53SPEAKER- It almost feels like they made a TV show
35:56SPEAKERthat's for like CTOs.
35:57SPEAKER- Kinda, sure, yeah.
35:59SPEAKER- Or I guess burgeoning CTOs at that point
36:02SPEAKER'cause probably CTO wasn't a defined job really then.
36:05SPEAKER- And there were like system designers and builders
36:07SPEAKERand stuff like that, right?
36:08SPEAKERLike the people that were like hands-on making this hardware.
36:11SPEAKER- I mean, I wonder if it was still shot out
36:13SPEAKERdown in the Valley where, I assume it was
36:16SPEAKERin just like a little studio on the side of 101
36:19SPEAKERor yeah, on the side of El Camino Real, I guess.
36:22SPEAKERAnyway, it's a weird, this was,
36:25SPEAKERit was really fun to go back and watch this.
36:29SPEAKERThe time also is good.
36:31SPEAKERHe, I think he talks about spending 10 minutes to back up,
36:33SPEAKER15 minutes to back up 10 megabytes.
36:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's right.
36:37SPEAKER- It was really funny 'cause this morning
36:39SPEAKERin the TechPod discord, somebody was talking about,
36:43SPEAKERoh, I wanna get the actual quote 'cause it was really good.
36:48SPEAKERIt is.
36:52SPEAKERThey're talking about going to the store
36:57SPEAKER'cause they needed a micro SD card for a Pi Zero.
37:01SPEAKERSo they just went to Micro Center and picked one up
37:02SPEAKERand got an energy drink at the same time.
37:04SPEAKERAnd the energy drink was more expensive
37:06SPEAKERthan the micro SD card, which probably, I mean,
37:10SPEAKERI'm guessing the micro SD card was like a 16 or 32 gig one.
37:13SPEAKER- Right.
37:14SPEAKER- So it's five orders of magnitude or something bigger.
37:16SPEAKER- Like how many tens of thousands of times bigger
37:18SPEAKERis this thing the size of your pinky fingernail?
37:21SPEAKER- Three orders of magnitude, mega giga tera.
37:24SPEAKERYeah, anyway, but yeah.
37:26SPEAKERAnd it costs less than the energy drink.
37:30SPEAKER- Right.
37:31SPEAKERLike you might as well buy it at the side
37:32SPEAKERof the cash register at a gas station
37:34SPEAKERor something at that point, right?
37:35SPEAKERLike it's nothing.
37:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, they ask one of the product designers
37:39SPEAKERand like, I know just, I know just like how far we've come
37:42SPEAKERis like the most cliched observation ever.
37:44SPEAKERBut like they asked the guy, there was like,
37:47SPEAKERhow far do you see this going?
37:48SPEAKERLike, what are the limits on what hard drive technology
37:51SPEAKERand storage capacity are going to do in the future
37:53SPEAKERbased on what you've seen?
37:54SPEAKERAnd he's like, oh, the limits are functionally limitless.
37:57SPEAKERYou know, like, you know, infinite,
37:58SPEAKERlike there's no ceiling on where this can go.
38:01SPEAKERAnd like, you know, sure enough,
38:03SPEAKERa 14 terabyte hard drive is pretty cheap these days.
38:08SPEAKER- Well, so there's a moment in this episode
38:13SPEAKERwhere they have like the editorial guy,
38:15SPEAKERlike the opinion guy come on.
38:17SPEAKER- Is this the, I wasn't sure how to bring this into it.
38:20SPEAKERIs this the orange turtleneck guy?
38:22SPEAKER- This is the orange turtleneck guy.
38:23SPEAKERI don't remember what his name is.
38:25SPEAKER- I'm pulling this out of my head.
38:27SPEAKERGeorge Morrow, I want to say?
38:29SPEAKERI think that's right.
38:31SPEAKERLike, I'll double check.
38:33SPEAKERHe's definitely positioned as the Andy Rooney of this show.
38:37SPEAKER- Yes.
38:38SPEAKER- They bring him in at the end to opine about the topic
38:41SPEAKERafter they've gone through all the technical stuff.
38:45SPEAKERAnd he kind of delivers what?
38:47SPEAKERLike this screed about we should be more thankful
38:51SPEAKERto hard drive designers.
38:53SPEAKERHe's almost got like a chip on his shoulder
38:55SPEAKERtoward the editors of like PC week or bite or whatever.
38:58SPEAKER- I like.
39:00SPEAKER- He's talking about like, oh, some editor at bite
39:02SPEAKERis just going to drop your product from a foot in the air
39:04SPEAKERand then say that it doesn't work anymore.
39:05SPEAKERAnd like, we don't appreciate your hard work enough.
39:08SPEAKER- See, I assumed he was an editor at bite
39:11SPEAKERand that was a thing that actually happened.
39:14SPEAKER- I would guess, I mean, let me check.
39:17SPEAKERYes, George Morrow is his name.
39:19SPEAKER- Yeah, George Morrow.
39:20SPEAKER- I just, the turtleneck just comes out of nowhere, man.
39:23SPEAKERBut he also, talking about hard drive design,
39:29SPEAKERhe uttered a phrase so mind blowing
39:32SPEAKERthat I had to write it down in the notes.
39:34SPEAKERHe's talking about operating in the treacherous world
39:37SPEAKERof magnetic flux.
39:39SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems right.
39:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
39:41SPEAKER- I mean, look, this is a conversation.
39:42SPEAKERThe things that he's talking about here
39:43SPEAKERwith like the using the magnets that float millimia,
39:50SPEAKERtiny space over the, of the hard drive head
39:53SPEAKERto turn physical bits on the hard drive platters
39:56SPEAKERso that you can store data there is something that like,
40:00SPEAKERI have had that same conversation in five or 10 year
40:03SPEAKERincrements with hard drive.
40:04SPEAKERLike when HGST started rolling out their glass platters
40:09SPEAKERthat debuted in the IBM 75 GXP Death Star,
40:13SPEAKERwhich we don't need to talk about.
40:16SPEAKERLike they were talking about the same thing.
40:18SPEAKERLike this is the challenge and the thing that has,
40:21SPEAKERthe only thing that has changed is how small
40:23SPEAKERthey can make the bits and how tightly they can jam them
40:25SPEAKERon the platters.
40:27SPEAKER- Which I think they grilled one of the designers
40:29SPEAKERin this episode about that very thing of just like,
40:31SPEAKERShay, what do you need to do?
40:33SPEAKERLike, what is the development process to make these things
40:34SPEAKERhold more data besides adding more platters?
40:38SPEAKERAnd they said exactly that, like, you know,
40:40SPEAKERpack more tracks onto the platter,
40:42SPEAKERpack more bits into the tracks, stuff like that.
40:43SPEAKERBut then they have the immediate reaction was like,
40:45SPEAKERisn't that just gonna make them less reliable
40:46SPEAKERto make everything smaller and denser?
40:49SPEAKERAnd they didn't have a good answer for that.
40:52SPEAKER- So George Morrow is another CPM person.
40:56SPEAKER- Really?
40:58SPEAKER- But he is, according to Wikipedia,
41:00SPEAKERhe was part of the Homebrew Computer Club
41:03SPEAKERand he improved the S100 bus used
41:05SPEAKERin many early microcomputers.
41:07SPEAKER- Okay, all right.
41:08SPEAKER- So like it's a who's who this show.
41:10SPEAKER- I was gonna say like that turtleneck really threw me off.
41:12SPEAKERIt sounds like he really, oh yeah, wow.
41:15SPEAKERPhD in mathematics at Berkeley,
41:18SPEAKERor looks like he washed out of that program.
41:20SPEAKERBut yes, like I thought he was just some kind of a pundit
41:23SPEAKERsort of critic of the industry,
41:25SPEAKERbut it sounds like he was really in it.
41:27SPEAKER- No, I think, I mean, a lot of these guys were the people
41:30SPEAKERwho were in that world.
41:33SPEAKER'Cause Homebrew Computer Club is what HP and Apple
41:36SPEAKERand all of the valley, the big valley giants,
41:41SPEAKERCompaq, all that spot, I don't know about Compaq, but HP.
41:43SPEAKER- Like Wozniak was involved with that, right?
41:45SPEAKER- Wozniak and Jobs showed their first Apple computer
41:51SPEAKERat the Homebrew Computer Club meeting.
41:53SPEAKER- Right, yeah, it's fun.
41:55SPEAKERI don't know how I got into this habit.
41:57SPEAKERIt's fun watching this show off and on
41:59SPEAKERand just like every time they bring a presenter on
42:01SPEAKERwith a product from the '80s, like Googling their name
42:04SPEAKERand seeing how many of them are listed
42:06SPEAKERas like Silicon Valley angel investors now
42:09SPEAKERand stuff like that.
42:10SPEAKERLike a lot of them are involved with like startup incubators
42:14SPEAKERand then sort of they're like the old guard
42:16SPEAKERor the elder statesman of the tech world, right?
42:19SPEAKER- It turns out, yeah, the people who were doing this,
42:24SPEAKERlike I really, I would love to know
42:26SPEAKERwho was funding Computer Chronicles.
42:28SPEAKER- Oh, it actually says at the end, of course,
42:30SPEAKER'cause it's '80s PBS.
42:32SPEAKER- Yeah, it's PBS, so it's all, yes,
42:33SPEAKERit's all sponsored by different--
42:35SPEAKER- Or funded by a generous grant from--
42:38SPEAKER- Yes, yes, it's definitely brought to you by,
42:40SPEAKERit's definitely one of those.
42:42SPEAKER- Yeah, that's really cool.
42:43SPEAKERDo we wanna talk about the iOmega guy?
42:45SPEAKER- Yeah, that was kind of the last big topic here
42:47SPEAKERthat I wanted to talk about was,
42:49SPEAKERwell, it's kind of two things.
42:50SPEAKERThey talked to an iOmega guy at a computer show,
42:52SPEAKERlike out in the field.
42:53SPEAKER- At Comdex.
42:54SPEAKER- Was that Comdex?
42:55SPEAKER- That was Comdex.
42:56SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
42:57SPEAKER- Yeah.
42:58SPEAKER- That was a 1985 Comdex.
42:59SPEAKERAlso, as an aside, if you go back
43:01SPEAKERand watch that segment again,
43:02SPEAKERI feel like that guy has a real Texas oil man kind of accent
43:07SPEAKERexcept he's shilling like magneto optical
43:10SPEAKERremovable storage disks or whatever those are.
43:12SPEAKER- Look, what were the centers of computing
43:15SPEAKERin the US at that time?
43:16SPEAKERIt was like Dallas where Texas Instruments was
43:20SPEAKERand the people that spun out of that.
43:21SPEAKER- Totally.
43:22SPEAKER- It was Boston where Wang and DC and all that stuff were.
43:26SPEAKERIt was Northern California.
43:29SPEAKERAnd I don't, I'm sure there were other people,
43:31SPEAKERother places, but it seemed like those were the like,
43:35SPEAKERyou had three types of computer nerds back in 1985.
43:38SPEAKER- Right.
43:39SPEAKER- Turtleneck wearing California boys.
43:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:43SPEAKER- Your Texas used car slash computer salesman.
43:46SPEAKER- 10 gallon hat guys.
43:47SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:48SPEAKER- And definitely seems like one of those.
43:50SPEAKER- And then the MIT eggheads from Boston.
43:52SPEAKER- But so this introduced me to multiple concepts here,
43:57SPEAKERwhich was, first of all, the product they were showing off
43:59SPEAKERseems like it was basically the precursor to the zip drive.
44:02SPEAKERIs that right?
44:03SPEAKERI mean, it was a giant removable storage cartridge
44:07SPEAKERkind of thing that they were showing off.
44:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it was a hard drive-ish capacity device
44:16SPEAKERthat didn't have read-write heads in the cartridge
44:19SPEAKERthat had a mechanism that lined those up with the platter
44:22SPEAKERwhen you put them in and somehow kept the platter
44:24SPEAKERfrom getting dusty and ruined.
44:25SPEAKER- Which I guess relies on the Bernoulli principle.
44:28SPEAKERIs that correct?
44:29SPEAKER- So.
44:30SPEAKER- What can you tell me about 19th century?
44:33SPEAKERI'm pulling this out of thin air.
44:34SPEAKERSwedish mathematician, is that right, Bernoulli?
44:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:38SPEAKER- Swiss, I forget.
44:39SPEAKER- So Bernoulli was a scientist
44:43SPEAKERbefore they were specializations, I guess.
44:46SPEAKEROh, we need to do a correction at the end of the episode
44:48SPEAKERfrom last week also, 'cause I made a mistake last week.
44:51SPEAKER- 18th century, sorry, we're all over the place
44:54SPEAKERwith corrections here.
44:55SPEAKER18th century, if this is the Bernoulli
44:58SPEAKERthat we're talking about.
44:59SPEAKER- So I think that the Bernoulli, they don't explicitly say,
45:05SPEAKERbut my understanding is that the Bernoulli principle
45:08SPEAKERin this case uses the spinning motion,
45:11SPEAKERthe air that moves around the disc
45:14SPEAKERwhen the disc is spinning to keep the head
45:18SPEAKERat the right spot above the,
45:20SPEAKERto pull the disc toward the head
45:21SPEAKERwithout letting it crash into the head, basically.
45:24SPEAKER- That's what I got out of this was that it was using
45:26SPEAKERsome kind of passive air pressure effects
45:28SPEAKERto keep the rebrite head oriented properly.
45:32SPEAKER- So I thought that was how all hard drives work.
45:33SPEAKERMaybe they don't, 'cause I mean, the Bernoulli effect
45:36SPEAKERwhen the drives are spinning as fast as they do
45:38SPEAKERin a modern hard drive is gonna,
45:40SPEAKERit was like Bernoulli, the Bernoulli effect
45:42SPEAKERis also what makes wings work, right?
45:44SPEAKERSo like a wing is humped on the top edge
45:46SPEAKERand flat on the bottom edge, and the air,
45:49SPEAKERbecause it's a fluid going over it creates lift pushing down
45:53SPEAKERbecause the air on the bottom goes slower
45:56SPEAKERthan the air on the top, and so the air on the top
45:58SPEAKERgets less dense and it pushes the wing up.
46:02SPEAKERAnd the same thing's happening inside here
46:04SPEAKERis my understanding, but I don't know for sure.
46:06SPEAKER- Is it possible that they have adapted modern hard drives
46:08SPEAKERto also use this because that's part
46:12SPEAKERof his big sales pitch here is that like our system,
46:14SPEAKERI forget what this product is called,
46:16SPEAKERbut it was like our system is immune to head crashes
46:18SPEAKERlike in a normal hard drive
46:19SPEAKERbecause we use the Bernoulli effect.
46:21SPEAKER- We all know that that's a lie.
46:22SPEAKERThere's no, the head crash is universal and inevitable
46:28SPEAKERif you run your drives long enough.
46:29SPEAKER- It was definitely a very competitive thing
46:31SPEAKERof like, those hard drives, I don't know about those.
46:33SPEAKERWe've got this thing figured out over here.
46:35SPEAKERYou should probably get our removable thing instead.
46:37SPEAKERAlso, they use the term Winchester drive
46:39SPEAKERto refer to hard drives, which I have not heard before.
46:41SPEAKER- So Winchester drives were drives where the read-write head
46:46SPEAKERand the disks were integrated in one piece.
46:50SPEAKERSo like on an old mainframe style,
46:52SPEAKERbig washing machine type hard drive,
46:54SPEAKERyou could take the disk bladders out
46:56SPEAKERand put new disk bladders in.
46:58SPEAKER- I see.
46:59SPEAKER- I believe that had to happen in clean room,
47:01SPEAKERbut I don't know for sure the bits might've been big enough
47:03SPEAKERthat the dust didn't matter.
47:08SPEAKERYeah, so these Bernoulli disks, just so you know,
47:12SPEAKERstarted out at five, 10 and 20 megabytes
47:15SPEAKERand they were about the size of a sheet of an A4 paper.
47:18SPEAKERSo they're like-
47:18SPEAKER- They're pretty gigantic when you see them working with them
47:20SPEAKERbut he like kinda, he really makes a sales pitch.
47:23SPEAKERLike he says, you can just like ship them cross country
47:26SPEAKERwithout any special packing,
47:27SPEAKER'cause they're that resilient that they can't,
47:29SPEAKERthe data can't be damaged by going through the mail.
47:32SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I mean, there's no head to hit in the thing.
47:35SPEAKERSo that's like, I don't know.
47:38SPEAKER- Just make sure there aren't any giant magnets
47:39SPEAKERin your shipping route.
47:41SPEAKER- Yeah, I think this is interesting
47:43SPEAKERbecause it's the progenitor of the,
47:44SPEAKERlike there's a through line here through zip and jazz drives
47:48SPEAKERand all that.
47:50SPEAKER- Yes, when I saw this for sure.
47:52SPEAKERSo I mean, does that, I guess that means every hard drive
47:54SPEAKERis a Winchester drive now technically?
47:56SPEAKER- I think Winchester was a brand, but I mean, yeah.
47:59SPEAKER- But in terms of the design,
48:00SPEAKERI think they use that term generically even in this episode.
48:03SPEAKER- Yeah, that would make sense.
48:05SPEAKERI looked up Winchester drive, Winchester disks
48:09SPEAKERand the information that was easily available
48:12SPEAKERon that was a little thin.
48:14SPEAKER- Oh, it's actually named after the rifle.
48:16SPEAKER- Because the cartridge in the...
48:19SPEAKER- Project head, Kenneth Haughton named it
48:20SPEAKERafter the Winchester 3030 rifle
48:22SPEAKERbecause it was planned to have two 30 megabyte spindles.
48:25SPEAKER- Wow.
48:26SPEAKER- The more you know.
48:27SPEAKER- Yeah, turns out.
48:29SPEAKER- Yeah, this is a fun episode.
48:32SPEAKER- I mean, this is fun.
48:34SPEAKER- I'm thinking Eric was, well, let me actually,
48:36SPEAKERlet me rephrase that.
48:37SPEAKERIf you were listening to this podcast,
48:38SPEAKERyou probably considered this sort of thing fun too.
48:41SPEAKER- Can we talk about the game review at the end?
48:46SPEAKER- Yeah, we can touch on that.
48:48SPEAKERThey definitely do their sort of like,
48:49SPEAKERhere's what's in the news this week
48:50SPEAKERand here's somebody with a product review
48:52SPEAKERand there's George Morrow doing his Andy Rudy thing.
48:55SPEAKERLike we mentioned, like there's a lot of,
48:57SPEAKERthere's a grab bag of stuff at the end of every episode
48:59SPEAKERthat we can touch on a little bit, but yes.
49:02SPEAKER- The news segment, I did like the news segment
49:05SPEAKERthat were like computer scientists feel
49:07SPEAKERthat the computer requirements for Ronald Reagan's Star Wars
49:11SPEAKERprogram is impossible to create
49:14SPEAKERbecause we will never be able to test them
49:15SPEAKERoutside of a wartime scenario.
49:17SPEAKER- Right, and also like he's usually vulnerable
49:20SPEAKERto espionage and code theft.
49:21SPEAKER- Yeah, huh, weird.
49:23SPEAKER- Yeah, that stuff's wild.
49:24SPEAKER- That turned out to be right.
49:25SPEAKER- But yes, I don't remember who the software reviewer was,
49:29SPEAKERbut he reviews this golden oldies pack
49:31SPEAKERin 1985 of golden oldie computer games.
49:35SPEAKER- It's incredible to me that we, his name is Paul Schindler.
49:40SPEAKERIt's incredible to me that we're already in 1985
49:44SPEAKERmining the nostalgia, hitting the nostalgia mines
49:49SPEAKERfor HD reissues.
49:51SPEAKERThese aren't even HD reissues, it's just like,
49:53SPEAKERhere's one place to buy five of these games.
49:55SPEAKERAnd the five games, it is, look, in the history of games,
50:01SPEAKERthree of these are important and one is Eliza.
50:05SPEAKER- Arguably not even a game.
50:06SPEAKER- Not even a game, yeah.
50:08SPEAKERAdventure, Eliza, Pong, and the Game of Life,
50:10SPEAKERalso maybe not even a game.
50:12SPEAKER- Yeah, Game of Life, more of a simulation,
50:14SPEAKERI guess I would call it.
50:16SPEAKER- But like, this is noteworthy to me.
50:18SPEAKERIt's funny to me because these four things are just like,
50:21SPEAKERwell, I mean, till Flash went away yesterday,
50:23SPEAKERthese four things are basically just like,
50:27SPEAKERhey, things you can go find running on a website
50:30SPEAKERsomeplace in JavaScript?
50:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
50:32SPEAKER- Right?
50:33SPEAKER- Yes, like I started to wonder,
50:36SPEAKERso this is $35 for a package from a company
50:39SPEAKERcalled Beverly Hills, or I'm sorry.
50:42SPEAKER- I thought it was called Software Country in Beverly Hills.
50:45SPEAKER- I'm sorry, the way this was worded, I misread this.
50:47SPEAKERYes, the company's name is Software Country
50:49SPEAKERfrom Beverly Hills, California.
50:50SPEAKERIt made me wonder if they actually had the license
50:53SPEAKERto any of these or were they just shoveling them onto-
50:57SPEAKER- Oh, you think they were just repackaging them
50:59SPEAKERand selling them for 35 bucks?
51:01SPEAKER- Like it would certainly not be the first time
51:02SPEAKERthat that happened in early software sales
51:05SPEAKERin the computing industry.
51:06SPEAKER- Also, it was $35 for Adventure, Eliza, Pong,
51:10SPEAKERand Game of Life in 1985 when $35
51:12SPEAKERwas an incredible amount of money.
51:14SPEAKER- Yes, I'm afraid I had to strongly disagree
51:16SPEAKERwith their reviewer who said that that was a fair price
51:18SPEAKERfor this package.
51:20SPEAKER- I mean, I don't even know what floppy disks
51:23SPEAKERwould have cost back then.
51:24SPEAKERI bet they were really expensive.
51:26SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, probably.
51:28SPEAKERThe three and a half wasn't even on the market yet.
51:30SPEAKER- No, it was only five and a quarters at that point.
51:32SPEAKER- Yeah.
51:33SPEAKER- Yeah, this is a weird time.
51:35SPEAKERIt's really fun.
51:37SPEAKERI'm really enjoying going back in
51:38SPEAKERand digging into the time capsule
51:40SPEAKERand trying to, the fun of this kind of episode
51:44SPEAKERof "Computer Chronicles" for me is picking up,
51:48SPEAKERdoing enough research to figure out what the context is
51:51SPEAKERfor the off-hand comments that they're making
51:53SPEAKERin the background that are so common knowledge
51:57SPEAKERthat they don't even need to provide context for.
51:59SPEAKER'Cause one thing that Stuart is really good at
52:02SPEAKERis giving everybody the context that they need
52:04SPEAKERto understand what's going on
52:06SPEAKERif you understand the underlying technology.
52:07SPEAKERAnd some of this stuff is just bonkers.
52:10SPEAKERThey talked about AT&T making a mobile display
52:14SPEAKERthat is a one-inch thick four-pound plasma display
52:16SPEAKERfor mobile computing.
52:18SPEAKER- That was just a little aside in the news segment.
52:20SPEAKERIt was the last headline.
52:21SPEAKERIt was just like, "AT&T has debuted a small plasma screen."
52:24SPEAKERAnd I'm like, "Dude, what?
52:24SPEAKER"They're making plasmas in 1985?"
52:27SPEAKERThat's wild. - They're calling monochrome.
52:29SPEAKER- Sure. - Okay, sure.
52:31SPEAKER- The first laptops I saw, even when I was in college,
52:34SPEAKERwere still monochrome displays in '93.
52:36SPEAKERAnd they were TFTs that were reflective.
52:41SPEAKERThis would have been something
52:41SPEAKERthat was the size of a suitcase,
52:43SPEAKERa one-inch thick four-pound display.
52:45SPEAKER- Yeah, although I guess that's fair.
52:47SPEAKERMaybe not every, but most widespread technologies
52:50SPEAKERafter they are widely adopted,
52:51SPEAKERwhen you go back and look at the history of them,
52:52SPEAKERthey've actually been around for 15 or 20 years
52:55SPEAKERin conceptual form.
52:57SPEAKER- Or in previous versions that didn't play ball,
53:02SPEAKERfor whatever reason.
53:03SPEAKER- Right, they were too expensive to make, or too big,
53:05SPEAKERor didn't fully get there.
53:07SPEAKER- The fun thing about this is going back
53:09SPEAKERand looking at the other alternative paths
53:11SPEAKERthat just disappeared.
53:12SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, I think every company mentioned
53:15SPEAKERin this episode, except for IBM and AT&T, no longer exists.
53:19SPEAKER- Yes, I believe that's right.
53:22SPEAKER- Like, Priam, who is the hard drive,
53:24SPEAKERthe people making the 16 megabyte hard drive
53:26SPEAKERthat they talked to, got bought by a different company
53:29SPEAKERand then immediately disappeared.
53:31SPEAKER- Yes, I did a little digging, like Plus Development
53:33SPEAKERor whatever it was called was a subsidiary of Quantum,
53:36SPEAKERwhich no longer exists.
53:37SPEAKER- Quantum got bought by Western Digital or Seagate
53:40SPEAKERor one of those companies in the early days
53:42SPEAKERof the mid-90s.
53:44SPEAKERThat's the hard drive consolidation.
53:45SPEAKER- Oh man, I remember the Quantum Fireball.
53:48SPEAKER- Quantum made a series of really weird drives.
53:51SPEAKERThey made those Bigfoot five and a quarter inch drives
53:54SPEAKERthat were like huge capacity but incredibly slow
53:57SPEAKER'cause the platters were so big.
53:59SPEAKERThey made a hard disk clone for IBM XT's
54:03SPEAKERwas one of their earliest products.
54:05SPEAKERSo it was like the slot that goes into the XT slot
54:08SPEAKERand you know, we have a hard drive on a card.
54:13SPEAKERYeah, weird stuff.
54:16SPEAKER- These things are so fun.
54:18SPEAKERI think I only became aware of Computer Chronicles
54:20SPEAKERthis past year.
54:22SPEAKERI'm pretty sure maybe the year before.
54:23SPEAKER- We talked about Computer Chronicles
54:25SPEAKERbefore we started doing the podcast, I'm pretty sure.
54:27SPEAKER- Maybe it's been a couple of years
54:28SPEAKERbut it's been very recently in my life
54:30SPEAKERthat I had even heard of the show.
54:31SPEAKERI had no idea about it.
54:32SPEAKER- We didn't have a PBS.
54:34SPEAKEROur PBS station, we only got it specific times of day
54:37SPEAKER'cause it was coming from like, God, where was it?
54:42SPEAKERIt was channel two from, I want to say Smyrna or something
54:47SPEAKERbut it was a long way.
54:50SPEAKERSo it only came in if the clouds were right, basically.
54:53SPEAKER- Nice.
54:54SPEAKER- And I don't think we would have gotten Computer Chronicles.
54:57SPEAKERI don't think it would have even aired where we were.
54:59SPEAKERThey wouldn't have paid for it.
55:00SPEAKER- Definitely would not have in rural North Carolina
55:02SPEAKERbut I mean, it's one of the many, many great things
55:05SPEAKERabout this thing is it was public television
55:07SPEAKERso it's all just out there, right?
55:08SPEAKERLike archive.org and YouTube have every episode of the show
55:11SPEAKERover the like 20 plus year run.
55:14SPEAKER- I'm sure that's a result of somebody who worked
55:15SPEAKERon the show going in and uploading thousands of episodes
55:18SPEAKERof the show.
55:19SPEAKER- What I mean is it's not controlled
55:20SPEAKERby some large corporation who wants to sell you
55:22SPEAKERthe archive or whatever.
55:23SPEAKERThey're all just freely available.
55:25SPEAKER- Snaveville is where channel two came from.
55:26SPEAKER- Also a lot of them like this particular episode
55:28SPEAKERon YouTube because like you said,
55:30SPEAKERthey're all just sort of uploaded by whoever.
55:32SPEAKER- Yeah.
55:33SPEAKER- Like this one has an incredible countdown from KCSM
55:36SPEAKERin San Mateo, San Francisco at the beginning of it.
55:40SPEAKER- Well these are probably the, like maybe it was somebody
55:42SPEAKERat the local, at the home PBS station that uploaded it.
55:47SPEAKER- Like this is probably the tape they would have played
55:50SPEAKERthere or something.
55:51SPEAKER- Yeah, this is probably a rip of the tape
55:55SPEAKERthat was played to air because this is uploaded
55:57SPEAKERby the computer Chronicles YouTube channel.
55:59SPEAKER- Right, this is the official archive that they have.
56:02SPEAKERBut that's what I mean though,
56:03SPEAKERbecause they're just like harvesting this thing
56:05SPEAKERfrom old tapes.
56:06SPEAKERYou get all these fun artifacts of broadcast,
56:08SPEAKERlike that countdown with just the most 80s ass looking
56:11SPEAKERmotion graphics on it.
56:12SPEAKER- Well, and I love like when Stuart does the intro
56:16SPEAKERin what looks like a proto data center or something,
56:18SPEAKERsomeplace he probably just went over to like, you know, HP
56:22SPEAKERor whoever it happened to be at the time.
56:24SPEAKER- I didn't think about that.
56:25SPEAKEREvery time I watched this, they've got so much B roll
56:27SPEAKERof like you said, like factories and data centers
56:30SPEAKERand you name it.
56:32SPEAKERAnd I guess if they were in the valley,
56:34SPEAKERlike they're right in the middle of all of that, right?
56:36SPEAKER- Yeah, this stuff was all still being built there, right?
56:38SPEAKERIt's not like they were shipping designs to China
56:40SPEAKERand then Foxconn was making them for them at this point.
56:43SPEAKERThis was like, you know, people were converting all those,
56:47SPEAKERthis is why those campuses in the valley are so big.
56:50SPEAKER- Yeah.
56:51SPEAKER- Anyway.
56:52SPEAKER- It's a fun show.
56:53SPEAKERI guess let us know what you think of this format.
56:56SPEAKERIf this is something that you would like to hear
56:58SPEAKERsitting regularly, 'cause I certainly love watching
57:01SPEAKERthis show.
57:02SPEAKERIt's just a, I don't know.
57:03SPEAKER- If you have episodes you love.
57:05SPEAKER- Yeah, for sure.
57:06SPEAKER- Or if you have magazine issues, like there's like,
57:08SPEAKERI want to go through one of the old end of the year
57:11SPEAKERcomputer shopper issues where they had like 500 pages
57:15SPEAKERof computer shopper.
57:16SPEAKER- The computer shopper.
57:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
57:21SPEAKER- The show was just like a warm blanket to me.
57:23SPEAKERSo if people are into this, then please let us know.
57:26SPEAKER'Cause I just, I don't know, it makes me feel good
57:29SPEAKERevery time I watch one of these.
57:31SPEAKER- Yeah, and corrections last week.
57:34SPEAKERI conflated the polio vaccine with the invention of vaccines,
57:39SPEAKERwhich meant the creation of the first vaccine last week
57:42SPEAKERwas off by, I don't know, a couple of hundred years.
57:45SPEAKER- My bad.
57:46SPEAKER- The very nerve to do so.
57:49SPEAKER- Well, you know, actually a couple hundred years
57:51SPEAKERis a pretty big margin of error to be fair.
57:53SPEAKER- 2000, 4,000 years of recorded history,
57:56SPEAKER200 years is not great.
57:58SPEAKERBut yeah, Jenner did the smallpox vaccine non-consensually,
58:02SPEAKERit seems, by giving a bunch of children,
58:06SPEAKERexposing them to the weak version or dead version
58:09SPEAKERof the smallpox, anyway.
58:12SPEAKERSo yeah, sorry about that.
58:14SPEAKERWe regret the error and we'll endeavor
58:16SPEAKERto do better in the future.
58:18SPEAKER- Yes.
58:19SPEAKER- We did not have a flu vaccine in 1918 though, so.
58:21SPEAKER- No, certainly not.
58:24SPEAKER- And I guess that'll do it for us this week, Brad.
58:26SPEAKER- Yeah, it was fun.
58:28SPEAKERIt's a good way to start off, here we are on New Year's Day.
58:31SPEAKER- It's 2020. - Nice way to start off 2021.
58:33SPEAKER- '21, oh right, it's the good year.
58:36SPEAKER- Let's hope, let's hope.
58:38SPEAKER- I have fingers across, man, I feel good about it.
58:40SPEAKER- We're not that far removed from the bad year yet,
58:42SPEAKERso I'm not gonna make any early predictions.
58:44SPEAKER- Spare.
58:46SPEAKER- Let's hope.
58:46SPEAKER- This is the part of the show
58:48SPEAKERwhere we thank our wonderful patrons
58:51SPEAKERfor supporting the tech pod.
58:52SPEAKERAnd if you would like to find out
58:54SPEAKERhow you can support the tech pod,
58:56SPEAKERyou can do that by going to patreon.com/techpod.
59:01SPEAKERAnd for a couple of bucks a month,
59:04SPEAKERyou can gain access to the fabulous tech pod discord,
59:06SPEAKERwhich we mentioned earlier in the episode even.
59:10SPEAKERBut I wanna make an extra special thanks
59:11SPEAKERto our executive producer level patrons,
59:14SPEAKERThe Buddy Fiend, Jacob Chappell,
59:16SPEAKERAndrew Cotton, David Allen, and James Cammack.
59:18SPEAKERThank you all so much for supporting the show.
59:20SPEAKER- Yes, thank you.
59:22SPEAKER- And yeah, you all are awesome.
59:25SPEAKERPlease let us know.
59:27SPEAKERBut thanks to everybody who supports the show,
59:29SPEAKERnot just the executive producers.
59:30SPEAKER- Totally.
59:33SPEAKER- We're just talking before we started
59:34SPEAKERabout some plans for 2021.
59:36SPEAKERAnd I think we have some exciting stuff coming.
59:39SPEAKER- Yeah, some fun ideas.
59:41SPEAKER- Yeah, such as maybe watch more computer protocols.
59:45SPEAKER- Well, I mean, that's one of them for sure.
59:45SPEAKER- It's more ambitious than that.
59:48SPEAKER- Look, one of the challenges is that the episodes
59:53SPEAKERthat are real research,
59:54SPEAKERI'd be like, I wanna do an episode about HDMI,
59:57SPEAKERabout pitfalls of the current HDMI world.
1:00:01SPEAKERBut like, I don't have a TV
1:00:03SPEAKERthat supports the newest HDMI stuff,
1:00:05SPEAKERso I can't actually just test it myself.
1:00:07SPEAKERAnd the amount of hardware that's out there
1:00:09SPEAKERthat supports that stuff in different levels
1:00:11SPEAKERis really broad.
1:00:12SPEAKER- It is a mess right now.
1:00:13SPEAKER- But like, I was talking to a friend,
1:00:15SPEAKERwe had this conversation in a different Discord
1:00:16SPEAKERwith a friend.
1:00:17SPEAKERI had a conversation with a friend two days ago
1:00:19SPEAKERand he was like, you know, I never plugged in the USB cables
1:00:21SPEAKERfrom my soundbar to my TV.
1:00:24SPEAKERAnd I was like, oh, that means you probably don't have HDR.
1:00:26SPEAKERAnd he's like, really?
1:00:27SPEAKERAnd I was like, yeah.
1:00:28SPEAKERAnd he plugged it in and he's like, yeah,
1:00:30SPEAKERwe plugged it in and then watched "Thor Ragnarok"
1:00:33SPEAKERor "Wonder Woman" or something.
1:00:34SPEAKERAnd we're like, oh my God, this looks so much better.
1:00:36SPEAKERSo he's had this expensive ass OLED for two years.
1:00:40SPEAKER- It's a tale as old as time.
1:00:41SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:42SPEAKERAnyways, but those episodes take an incredible amount
1:00:45SPEAKERof time to research and cover all the bases.
1:00:49SPEAKERSo we were looking for some things that are,
1:00:51SPEAKERthat we can do a little more easily repeatable
1:00:55SPEAKERthan those for the in-between episodes.
1:00:57SPEAKER- Yes.
1:00:59SPEAKER- And if you have ideas for that stuff,
1:00:59SPEAKERsend them in to the email address is techbot@content.town.
1:01:03SPEAKERBut thank you all so much.
1:01:04SPEAKERAnd we will see you next week.
1:01:06SPEAKER- Thank you everybody.
1:01:07SPEAKERHappy new year.
1:01:08SPEAKER- Happy new year.
1:01:09SPEAKERBye everybody.
1:01:09SPEAKER(upbeat music)