Caverns Measureless to Man

Over the course of this weekend - for no other reason than to satisfy an unending curiosity, I have re-created a simulacrum of a computing platform I last saw perhaps thirty five years ago. While tinkering with the Raspberry Pi (a tiny little computer that sits on the corner of my desk, and tries not to disappoint), I discovered how to create a platform upon which I could re-build the under-pinnings of MS-DOS, and Windows 3.11. Within an hour or two I not only had Windows 3.11 working - I also had Microsoft Office, Lotus SmartSuite, Borland Office, and countless other abandoned software suites. I have no reason to use any of them. After another couple of hours I had the DOS (character based) versions of Word, Excel, Lotus 123, dBase, Protext, Norton Commander, Wordstar, and Wordperfect up and running. Again, no reason to use any of them. You know the mad thing? It all fits on a small memory stick. The entire collection of software - that ran companies all over the world for the better part of a decade - fits on a small memory stick. It fits into the corner of a small memory stick. It still beggars my mind that a tiny computer that costs no more than a meal at a restaurant can not only run it’s own software - but can within itself simulate thirty-odd year old hardware, and run a second operating system within it’s own, and then run software for that operating system on top of that. Just to put the cherry on top, I tried running the old character based applications within Windows 3, within the emulator, on top of the tiny computer, sitting on the corner of the desk. It worked flawlessly. While eating dinner this evening another old memory returned - Infocom text adventures. Back in the days before games consoles took over the world, and before 3D graphics removed a generation’s imagination, there was a thing called “interactive fiction” - or “text adventures”. The computer would render the text of the story on the screen, and you would give instructions to (hopefully) progress the story, which mostly took place in the theatre of your own mind. If not for the cinematic rendition of “Ready Player One” being so awful, text adventures would have seen an explosive comeback. In the novel of “Ready Player One” (which is infinitely better than the movie), Wade Watts has to complete a real-life version of the text-adventure “Zork” to gain one of the keys to the gates. Anyway. After a search through the abandoned catacombs of the internet, I discovered a treasure-trove of the old Infocom text adventure games, and got them running on the Heath Robinson time-machine in the junk room. I won’t tell you how much time I then spent arguing with Mr Prosser while lying in the mud in front of a digger - in front of Arthur Dent’s house - while a Vogon Constructor Fleet approached.