From the Bookshelf: Priming the Pump

(subtitle: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution)

Since posting about the convolutions I worked through to play one old computer game, I've continued on an "old computers" kick with the emulators I found, digging out some of my family's old computer magazines to start to type in (and debug the errors I made typing) some of the shortest programs they printed and also going through all the information I can find online. I also ordered a book I'd heard about a while before; there's something about "spending money" on this new kick that seems to make it a little more serious, even if it's also to learn more... "Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution" is by a husband and wife who wrote and sold a word processor ("Lazy Writer") for those computers. While they've interviewed a number of other notable people from those days, going from initial chapters about how a few people at the Tandy Corporation started a small project to build and sell a pre-assembled computer to make up for the CB craze drying up at Radio Shack stores and how a whole series of third-party disk operating systems were written for the TRS-80 to make up for actual or perceived flaws in the "official" DOS, apparently released too soon, to a chronicle of David Welsh growing up as an electrical experimenter does sort of make the book feel like a "personal project" in every sense. Still, something about that is appealing. The book doesn't feel as if it's out to settle old scores of any sort, although it does deal with old controversies...
( History as morality play? )