The Whizzer and WordStar

I discovered my mentor during my teen years. Bit Stream lived two miles from me across open park and empty field. Bit was a grizzled, wiry old man who wore the same pair of loose fitting polyester pants every day, held up by an elastic belt he claimed was once owned by Herman Hollerith.

I had not intended to tell Granny that I was visiting Bit, but somehow the news slipped out. Granny was impressed.

"Thet ol' fool don' know nuthin'," Granny cackled. She was finishing packing my lunch, a peanut butter and jelly with chips. Obviously she didn't know the same Bit Stream I did.

"But Granny," I whined, "he's got the biggest disks in the county, and a brand new Super Whizzer 5."

"P'shaw," Granny was in rare form. Even 40 years later I have been unable to locate a dictionary with that particular phrase in it, or invent an appropriate retort. "You'll get nuthin' done on thet box."

Granny put the sandwich and chips into my backpack, and started stuffing in manuals. My Wonder bread, on the bottom of the pack, had already lost four of its 12 ways. I was calm as always.

"Noooooo," I screamed and jumped toward the bag. Granny was 90, but could still move her hand faster than the eye can follow. I never reached the bag. It took two days before my hand stopped stinging.

"But Granny, Bit says we don't need any manuals."

"Take 'em anyway. Jes' humor an ol' woman"

I put on the pack, bursting with manuals and oozing peanut butter, and headed toward the door, patting Granny's PC on the way out. She still used the 8088 box her mother had given her on her wedding day all those years ago. I secretly hoped that Bit was ignorant of the existence of this relic.

My feet flew as best they could under the weight of all the books across the open field toward Bit's house. A bean stalk figure moved slowly around the outside of the shack, tilting slightly to the left with the weight of a variety of pens and calculators protruding from the shirt pocket. I waved at Bit and he raised a gnarled arm in reply.

I did have an ulterior motive in choosing this day for my adventure. Miss Geek, my English teacher, had assigned a ten page paper last month, which was due tomorrow. The heavy demands on my time had prevented me from doing it til now, and I wanted the full power of Bit's Whizzer at my disposal.

He swatted me across the shoulders in greeting as soon as I got into range. As he helped me up, I brushed the dirt off my knees. My pack had come open slightly, exposing the manuals. I hoped Bit wouldn't notice.

"What're you doin' with them thangs?"

"Granny made me take them. I told her that real men don't need help, but she stuffed them in all the same."

Bit had the old man's sparkle in his eyes. "Thet ol' bat still have 'er '88? Lordy. She shore don' know what real computers are about."

We had arrived at the Whizzer, spread over three tables and a couple shelves in Bit's living room. Bit flicked a switch here and there and soon noises started from about a dozen odd looking boxes. Bit was explaining to me the differences between his three optical disks and their controllers when the four monitors came to life.

"Got any idears on whet you want to see fust?"

"How about the word processor?" I explained to Bit about Miss Geek and her irritablilty over late assignments.

"We'll load 'er up fer you." Bit's hands flew across the 460 key super enhanced keyboard. "Fust we do a control-alt-delete- command-shift to reset and then reboot off the middle optical with the mouse and tablet drivers. You be needin' the scanner?"

"No." If I could scan it, I thought, would I be waiting to type?

"Lit me show you some o' the features o' this box." Bit fondled the mouse and a long bank of function keys. "This here mode emulates the ol' '88, jest like your Granny got." WordStar booted and looked inviting, but Bit was too quick for me.

"This is protected mode."

"Can we boot WordStar again?", it was getting late.

"Boy wayes you head at? Any fool knows you cain't do nuthin' in protected mode. Ain't possible to write software fo' it. Thet's why they called it 'protected'."

The mouse and function keys were a blur again. A bright band of colors flashed and an eagle flew across the screen. I was impressed.

"What is this mode?"

"It's the Mode-With-No-Name. Tain't even in the manual, but I'll figger out what it does soon enough. Cain't find any operating system thet supports it, so I might havta port somethin' over. Probably great fer word processing."

Bit had me ready to try a pencil. He flashed into another mode and stepped back from the keyboard. The main monitor had a relatively clear screen, with helpful notations in the others.

"Go to it", Bit was grinning ear to ear.

It took me a couple minutes to locate the home keys on the massive keyboard before starting to type. My brilliant first sentence spilled across the screen.

"Yef mamnreuie aew sei dkrwe vdsiwe."

"Did I ferget to tell you I reprogrammed the keyboard to modified Dvorak?"

Bit moved the mouse and played across the graphics tablet. Fifteen minutes later "A" printed "a," but that at least I could deal with.

The old conehead watched in admiration as I blazed into double digit words per minute. A few sentences later I noticed that the monitor was a couple sentences behind my fingers. I tried the mouse, but the little bowling ball icon Bit prefered was jammed. The 42 function keys didn't.

"Did I ferget to tell you 'bout the typing features? When you hit 'o' then 'u' then 'l' it'll freeze real good."

My grade was on the line and I'd discovered a new way to make dry ice. Bit, of course, had the answer.

"Thet feature ain't no reel problem. You jus' press the semi- reboot sequence into debug mode and alter a couple o' bytes in the BIOS part o' memory." Bit pulled a small assembly language routine into the window on monitor two, dropped it down into monitor three and then dragged it across into mine. Touch returned to the keys, magic to the mouse.

"Did I ferget to mention that I wrote a terminate an' stay resident program that ties the spelling checker into the thesaurus into the keyboard buffer? It waits til you type 'ou' and then uses an AI routine to figger if you are about to type an 'l.' If the probability is right, it does an interrupt, calls the thesaurus an' lets you pick another werd. Does slow typing down a lick or two, but it's werth it for the extra safety."

Bit started the TSR and I learned the joy of typing against a head wind. I worked on in silence for a few minutes, until I noticed the screen had inverted.

"Did I ferget to mention that you have to be real careful about touching F12 after F40 or F27?"

I sighed. At least Bit would know how to get me out of this problem. Funny thing, though. My backpack had chosen that exact moment to fall open and Bit had picked up the manuals and was carefully straightening the pages. One was obviously giving him real touble, because he stared at it for some time.

"Cain't stand untidy manuals." That one page must have been defective, since he had been working on it for a good five minutes.

"You ain't fixed thet yet boy?" he said. "I thought it was obvious." A quick flip of the mouse and a couple thousand keystrokes later I was humming. A few minutes later, so was the Whizzer. It was time for me to go, as Bit's TSR scheduler was reminding me.

"How do I save", I asked as I finished my first paragraph.

"Did I ferget to mention that the interrupt in the scheduler erases the memory used by the word processor? Thet's why I got my clock on the console, so thet I can save jest before the scheduler warns me 'bout somethin'." I put the manuals back in my backpack, except for the one that Bit was still working on to align the pages. He wanted to teach that one a lesson.

Granny met me just inside the door and took my pack off into the kitchen. "Dinner'll be in fifteen minutes," she called, "Git you' werk done."

For some reason she had already turned on old '88 and WordStar was booted and ready. I sat down to write my paper, but only after drawing the curtains. You just can't tell who might walk by.