Thalia Archibald

Anything that can go wrong in a demo will go wrong.

I couldn’t connect to the projector and used a TV. My serial pin jumper hack for my Teletype Model 43 didn’t work. My VT220 wouldn’t connect. My PiDP-11 fell, so all four standoffs are snapped with plastic stuck in the case. My Portavision TV wouldn’t tune to channel 3, so my three earliest CoCos were unusable. All my Commodore 64 games on floppies were unusable, because I couldn’t find its serial cable.

I’ve troubleshoot all of these things before and have detailed notes, but am utterly incapable when frazzled.

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing

Mar 27 at 4:35amWeb
Show threadThalia Archibald1d ago
Apparently the solution to demo unpredictability is redundancy /s. I brought 13 or so machines, so there was still plenty working.
Show threadMatthew Archibald1d ago
@thalia And being in front of a group no less. That's the worst. I bet that was exceptionally frustrating.
Show threadRob Ricci1d ago
@thalia it was great, though!
Show threadEthan Blanton1d ago

@thalia Demos with "things" always (ALWAYS), go like this. The good news is that people are happy enough that the things simply exist that you, the presenter, feel these failures far more strongly than anyone else.

Demos with things that are several decades old are a whole 'nother level.

(citation: I do retrocomputing demos annually at our local hackathon; all time favorite failure was blowing an inaccessible breaker that took out all presentation capabilities in the room, after IT went home.)

Show threadmitch1d ago
@thalia Don’t worry it was a lot of fun!