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DEC Wars (LONG)

michaud@decvax.UUCP (Jeff Michaud)
(chuckle)

 A long time ago, on a node far, far away (from ucbvax).....
 
 	********* D E C   W A R S ! ! *********

 	From the adventures of luke vaxhacker
 	episode n

 Luke had grown up on an out of the way terminal cluster whose
 natives only spoke BASIC, but even he could recognize an old
 ASR-33.

 "It needs and eia conversion at least," sniffed 3CPU, who
 was (as usual) trying to do several things at once.  Lights
 flashed on Con Solo's eyes as he whirled to face the parallel
 processor.
 
 "I've added a few jumpers.  The Milliamp Falcon can run current
 loops around any Imperial TTY Fighter.  She's fast enough for
 you."
 
 "Who's your co-pilot?" asked PDP-1 Kenobie.
 
 "Two Bacco, here, my bookie."

 "Odds aren't good," said the brownish lump beside him, and then
 fell silent, or over.  Luke couldn't tell which way was top
 underneath all those leaves.

 Suddenly, RS232 started spacing wildly.  They turned just in time to
 see a write cycle coming down the unibus toward them.  "Imperial
 Bus Signals!" shouted Con Solo.  "Lets boot this popsicle stand!
 Tooie, set clock fast!"

 "Ok, Con," said Luke.  "You said this crate was fast enough. Get
 us out of here!"
 
 "Shut up, kid!  Two Bacco, prepare to make the jump into system
 space! I'll try to keep their buffers full."
 
 As the bookie began to compute the vectors into low core, spurious
 characters appeared around the milliamp falcon.  "they're firing!"
 shouted Luke. "can't you do something??"

 "The jump into system space takes time, kid.  One missed cycle and
 you could come down right in the middle of a pack of stack frames!"

 "In three to five we can go now," said the bookie.  Bright chunks
 of position independent code flashed by the cockpit as the Milliamp
 Falcon jumped through the kernel page tables.  As the crew breathed
 a sigh of relief, the bookie started paying off bets.
 
 "Not bad, for an acoustically coupled network," remarked 3CPU.
 "Though there was a little phase jitter as we changed parity."

 
 	TO BE CONTINUED.........

 	SOME MONTHS LATER.........

 Luke was feeling rather bored.  3CPU could get to be rather
 irritating and RS232 didn't really speak Luke's language.
 Suddenly, luke felt someone's eyes boring through the back
 of his skull.  He turned slowly to see.....nothing. A quiet
 voice came from somewhere in front of him.
 
 "Grasshopper, the carrier is strong within you."  Luke froze,
 which was a good thing since his legs were insisting that he
 run but they weren't likely to be particular about direction.
 Luke guessed that his odds of getting lost in the dense tree
 structures were pretty good.  Unfortunately, the bookie wasn't
 available.

 "Yes, very strong, but the modulation is yet weak. His network
 interface is totally undeveloped," the voice continued.  A small
 furry creature walked out of the woods as Luke stared on.
 Luke's stomach had now joined the rest of his body in loud
 complaints.  Whatever was peering at him was certainly small
 and furry, but Luke was quite sure that it didn't come from
 Alpha Centauri.
 
 "Well, well," said the creature as it rolled its eyes at Luke.
 "Frobozz, y'know.  morning, name's modem. what's your game?
 Adventure? D&D? Or are you just one of those apple-pong types
 that hang around the store demonstrations?"  Luke closed his
 eyes.  Perhaps if he couldn't see it, it wouldn't notice him.

 "H'mm," muttered the creature.  "Must use a different protocol.
 !@@@H @@  @@($5@@@H       ]^"G$  @#&@@G_ (O% @@@@%%H(B ?"
 "No, no," stammered Luke.  "I don't speak EBCDIC. I was sent
 here to become a Unix Wizard.  must have the wrong address."
 
 "Right address," said the creature.  "I am a Unix Wizard.  
 Device drivers are a specialty.  Or do you prefer playing with
 virtual memory?"

 Luke eyed the creature cautiously.  If this was what happened
 to System Wizards after years of late night crashes, Luke wasn't
 sure he wanted anything to do with it.  He felt a strange affection
 for the familiar microcomputers of his home.  And wasn't virtual
 memory something you got from drinking too much coke?
 

 	TO BE CONTINUED....  IF WE'RE NOT LYNCHED......

(From the "Rest" of RHF)


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