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Comment by lovich | Hacker News Reader

Depends on the situation. 40 years ago, software engineers were an extremely rare breed, and concerns about hacking and security were negligible compared to today.

If I was a manager with purchasing power I would have viewed it as proof that the machine was programmable and wasn’t just a “toaster” that had been built to do one thing and only one thing. It’s not like he made the machine generate garbage noise, displaying set text on the fly wasn’t a commodity back then as far as I know

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Hard to think of this as almost 40 years ago, but it was... my dad drove me up to MacWorld Expo in San Francisco in 93. We got badges and walked the whole floor a few times, looking at stuff. I was 13. Dad was a lawyer who had no interest in computers or my nerdy addictions and I think it was the only time in my life he and I ever took a trip alone, without the family. But he realized I was really, really obsessed with Macs, and what I didn't know was that he was about to divorce my mom and leave us. He so didn't realize I was using the house phone to run a pirate bbs for the last couple years. But he knew how to get around at trade shows. I remember just losing my mind at a few booths... VistaPro and Infini-D and the guy doing the Claymation demo, sculpting and rigging simple characters in almost realtime.... Dad got me my first Wacom tablet at that show. We stayed the night at the SF Hilton. Drove home to LA feeling like it was the best weekend of my life.

(edit) I just realized I'm drunk and this has nothing whatsoever to do with your post. Just a memory that seemed vaguely relevant. Disregard.

I very much enjoyed this comment - it sounds like it was a great experience. It’s a nerdier kind of beatnik prose.

I thought it was a lovely reply, thanks for sharing!

> Hard to think of this as almost 40 years ago

That's because it was almost 30 years ago, not 40 ;)

heh. yup. I realized that after I wrote it, but I thought I should just let the original mistake stand. I've been feeling older than usual lately.

It’s for the tangentially-related discussions and stories like this that I read Hacker News – sometimes skipping the original article.

Doesn't matter, I read and enjoyed it anyway :)

Yeah, if you were there, but if you walked last the rest of the day and wanted to see the instrument working, only to be met with a "some guy broke it", you wouldn't be as happy.

I think my, admittedly unstated, point is that most managers were incapable of doing an honest evaluation of computer equipment at the time. Someone coming up to a machine and fucking with it in a way that could produce useful work results, like making a random graphing machine display programmable names, would be a strong indicator that the machine could actually do something instead of being a complete gamble

I don't disagree, but if you weren't there when he programmed it, it would just be "the machine is broken" to you.

Imagine someone messing with your car. Might be an easy fix if you are a mechanic. Most people are not.

I don’t know the machine, but it sounds to me like what he did was just part of the normal operation. So the car analogy would be more like changing someone’s radio presets to some embarrassing station as a prank. Annoying, but you don’t need a mechanic to fix that.

But he didn't break it.

He made it not show the thing the salesperson needed it to show, which prevented the salesperson from doing his job.

Please. A powercycle fixed it and besides, if you don't want people to play with the gear then don't put it in the general public aisle. That's where people will mess with your gear as any trade show booth operator very well knows.

I worked in a computer store, the number of pranks that people got up to with the gear there was insane and some of them were quite a bit more harmful than this one. I really don't see the problem. As long as you can reboot the device no harm done. Once people start flashing your systems or rewriting boot loaders we're in different territory.

How do you know a powercycle fixed it?

Because I actually read - and understood - the OPs comment.

Including the part where he never says if the power cycle fixed it?

Including the part where he explains in which part of the memory his program is stored. This is before the age of flash.

If you want to verify it for yourself the manual is here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=HP8566+spectrum+analyzer+ope...

Thanks for the link. I have not read that manual for over 40 years. Appendix B "Advanced Display Programming" is where I learned the mischief I did at the show.

I guess I could have prevented a lot of HN grief if I had clarified that a AC power cycle absolutely clears all display memory and completely eradicates anything that I had put there.

You did make it clear by stating that it was in volatile memory.

I'm really surprised at the venom and all the extrapolation here.

Obviously, nobody should be judged by the stupid pranks they pulled decades ago, it's like telling my neighborhood kids that they are terrible people for ringing my doorbell.

By the way, awesome piece of gear. I never owned one but did work with one at a physics institute in Amsterdam on Sundays when the place was deserted.

As for tradeshow pranks... never mind. ;)

All good!

Oh, and just in case some pedantic HN reader notices that the manual you linked comes up for the 8566B, which did not hit the market until 1985, and that was less than 40 years ago, I had actually read the manual for the 8566A which was released in 1978. I think the HP event was in '83 at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach.

As pointed out elsewhere maybe the sales guy should know how to operate the thing he is selling?

Also, it sounds like a power cycle cleared up the issue so no big problems.

Well maybe the engineers should know how to sell the thing they're making? The salesperson's job is to sell, not to operate, and why should he know every last intricacy of the machine?

I don't know that a power cycle cleared the issue up, a reset definitely didn't. OP just said the salesperson power-cycled it, not that that fixed it.

> Well maybe the engineers should know how to sell the thing they're making?

I agree, why not have an technical guy there who knows how to operate the thing and can support the sales guy? If the company is sending only sales guys with no in-depth technical knowledge to a trade show, it's fully understandable and well-deserved if this sort of thing happens.

> why should he know every last intricacy of the machine?

If I am buying an expensive piece of hardware you better believe I will ask questions about the intricacies and if I don't get answers I will not be buying.

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