Re: Larry Wall on conlanging

On Wed, 19 May 1999, Padraic Brown wrote:

>
> Which: Basic, 64k computers or the Z80?  I had an original PC with a Z80
> converter, but that broke down eventually.  I don't know if they ever
> developped anything beyond the Z80 or not.  If I remember right, you could
> buy IBM PCs with anywhere from 16k to 640, maybe 64k on board (in the days
> when you had to put the chips in one by one).  I think it was 64, and you
> could put together a memory card with up to 640k.  In any event, it's a
> darn fine thing they've improved, because the Kernu grammar is darned near
> half a meg.  I'd never be able to work with it on one of those old
> machines.
>
> Padraic.
>
Years ago (after I ditched my Sinclar ZX-Spectrum), I started out with
a real PC - it had a 640kb of memory and _two_ floppy drives. I have
written megabytes of texts, grammars, dictionaries and stories on the
thing. In fact, the song about the falling plums was first written on
that PC. It had an amber screen which was ever so restful for the eyes
and it was absolutely impossible to play games on it, or to tinker with
it (which aided in the production of said megabytes), and a keyboard I
have used on many other PC's, since it was so good. A few years ago I
gave it to my mother in law, and this week the movers will come in and
will take it away to its graveyard.  The memories of Lettrix (which I
used to code a Denden chancery font in) still haunt me sometimes...


Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt