During freshman year, we were taught how to use computers, how to design houses and furniture, how to operate machine tools, repair cars, create circuit boards, it goes on.
IBM - XT (eXtended Technology)I remember that same summer. I used to hang out at my cousin’s (ironically the second Mike in this short story) house every summer. He was blessed with having the most advanced gadgets there was to find in the market because his mom was a top executive in a local bank. Anyway, where was I? Well, he had an IBM XT. It was kick-ass because we grew tired of playing Atari (bad graphics… 2-bit… Imagine a basketball game that had players taller than the basketball hoop).
There was this large black cardboard thing that you place inside a slot in the machine for you to start up the machine. And then after a minute, you replace it with another black cardboard thing. When the blinking cursor comes up, you type in [dir] and press [Enter]. You select a game to play from the list it gives you by typing it down and pressing again. Patience is extremely needed but it pays off because we had tons of games to choose from. There was the ever popular “Pacman”, the gruesome “Battle Tank”, the adventurous “Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?”, and our favorite, “World Olympics”, to name a few.
We’d play games from the moment I’d get there until my parents pick me before dinner time. It was loads of fun.
One time, I arrived at Mike’s house and he wasn’t in his room yet. I wanted to start playing with the games on the machine already, so what I did was turn it on, inserted any random black cardboard thing I could find and waited for the games to load.
I typed in [dir] and pressed [Enter]. I then noticed that each and every letter I typed in it would return "Disk boot failure"… What the heck is “Disk boot failure” anyways?
I turned off the machine. I turned it on again and I then tried a different black cardboard type of thing and did the whole process altogether. The same thing happened again.
He tried to run the machine, but, it returned the same message as when I tried it out. I’m really dead. I killed the machine. I killed our toy.
It was 5:45pm. Twenty one years ago, an eight year old boy was playing in the street with other kids just in front of their house when he notices a huge white van park in front of his friend’s (Mike) house. Mike’s parents and Mike enter the van with tons of luggage. Mike opens his side of the van’s window just enough to peek a bit and show his gloomy face.
The eight year old boy runs home as the van carrying one of his childhood friends drive away.
Eight year old boy’s mom: “Well, Michael’s dad was given a job to work in the
Eight year old boy: “Eh, why does he have to go with them? Can’t he stay in their house?”
Eight year old boy’s mom: “No he can’t. They sold the house already.”
Eight year old boy: “Ay… Can I go to the
Eight year old boy’s mom: “Of course you can. You study hard and when you graduate college, you should work for IBM just like Mike’s father. Promise ok. So you can bring us to the
Eight year old boy: “OK. I promise.”
