When I saw the headline"4 arrested in federal terror probe into Infocom", my first reaction was "they still exist?" followed by "how on earth could it be linked to terrorism?" Of course, the Infocom in this case is not the same Infocom I used to know. The company no longer exists, but its memory lives on the in nether realm of computer nerds who spent way too much time playing Infocom's games. By common acclaim, Infocom made the greatest adventures, with such legendary titles as the Zork series, Planetfall and also The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which they did in cooperation with Douglas Adams. What used to require the full capacity of a computer twenty years ago, you can now play online in your web-browser. To those who're used to the whizz-bang graphics and sound of modern games, the Infocom adventures are unlikely to be very captivating at first sight. But the level of immersion into the worlds Infocom created was very high nonetheless. What the computer could not show, you had to make up for with your imagination.

The goal of an adventure is to solve puzzles as you go along. You can type simple commands to the computer, such as "look" and "get toothbrush," or "lie in front of bulldozer." One of the classic puzzles in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was getting the Babel Fish into your ear... I can still remember how to do it. (I compensate for this by not being able to remember birthdays, anniversaries, holidays or anything that happened before my last nap.) Ah, those were the days...

To those who've been wondering why blogging has been sparser of late, there are two reasons: 1) I got stuck with work quite a bit and 2) in the time that I've had, I've been playing with my antique computers. Putting up a section on some vintage computing equipment on the site is a project I've been working on, but I have not quite gotten around to having something presentable.

Antique computers have charm, spirit and soul. But it's not the age that does it; I feel no emotional connection to an old IBM PC XT, for instance, and a Hercules CGA card with monitor is not going to make my pulse go any faster. Those are soulless machines. Husks. On the other hand, some computers have a deep inner beauty that enchants and enthralls. In part, it is because I've grown up with some of them, such at the Atari ST or Apple ][e. In others, it's the wonderful quirks and amazing hacks that made them great, such as CP/M computers. Besides Z80 assembler code is beautiful, just like 68000 assembler is elegant. Intel assembler rubs me the wrong way.

I am trying to resurrect my old Atari 1040 STfm. The SM 125 monitor works, just about. It has a diode that keeps shorting out every now and then, and rather than re-soldering it on the motherboard, it now sits outside the monitor case with two long leads. Replacing it is dead easy now, but the downside is that I have small bits of unprotected wiring with several kilovolts over them. Touching them hurts. So I don't do that very often. The 1040 has also been upgraded to 4 MB of RAM from the stock 1 MB, but some of the ASICs are a bit quirky and need to be cooled with a BIG fan in order to prevent memory errors. The main problem I now have with the ST is that my SCSI hostadapter no longer works. The ST had its own harddisk interface, the AHDI, and SCSI hostadapters were needed to connect them to SCSI harddisks. My old GE-Soft IV hostadapter does not seem to do much anymore, while my newly acquired ICD The Link hangs the machine on boot. I fear I may have a blown DMA port on the ST now. Very very annoying. And sad. Now I am going to have to buy a new ST, because I do want, I do need a working Atari ST. I can no longer live without one.

In better news, my Apple IIc now has company, as I managed to acquire an Apple ][e and an ITT. Much joy awaits. If only I had more composite color monitors.