"I marveled at the room of towering equipment secured behind a wall of glass but we were not allowed to enter. When Bobby's dad stepped inside to run the weekly backups, we kids were allowed into a nearby room, quiet and pleasantly lit, with a row of three - well, they sort of looked like typewriters? I'd just seen my first DECwriter. I had no idea what to do."
"Bobby leaned over, poked 'startrek' on the keyboard, and hit RETURN. The DECwriter generated a back-and-forth static noise as it printed each line onto paper: ORDERS: STARDATE = 3300 AS COMMANDER OF THE UNITED STARSHIP ENTERPRISE, YOUR MISSION IS TO RID THE GALAXY OF THE DEADLY KLINGON MENACE. TO DO THIS, YOU MUST DESTROY THE KLINGON INVASION FORCE OF 24 BATTLE CRUISERS."
"I knew we couldn't stay any longer but I deeply wanted to get back in front of that DECwriter and play with this incredibly fun machine. I begged for the pages of greenbar - the striped paper printers used at the time - that contained the record of my play. Bobby's dad gave it a quick check to make sure it contained no company data, then handed it to me."
A childhood winter visit to a datacenter revealed a room of towering equipment and a nearby quiet space with DECwriters. A friend typed 'startrek' and a DECwriter printed a text-based Starship Enterprise mission, producing a static noise as it printed each line. Four hours passed while the children remained enthralled before being coaxed away. A greenbar printout of the session was checked and handed over. The experience produced gobsmacked wonder, a sense of being given the perfect toy, and an overflowing imagination about what computers could create, especially 'real enough' interactive text adventures.
Read at Theregister
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