Vintage pranking

[TheSmirk]

I remember as a young lad walking to the "Arthur's" department store near my grandmothers and checking out the TI99/4a they had setup for people to demo, and after playing my fill of (?)Munch Man, I would get into where you could type basic commands and do something like:

100 PRINT "SOMETHING OBNOXIOUS"
110 GOTO 100
120 END
RUN


Then I'd hide around the corner and watch the salesperson working the electronics area try to figure out what the hell was going on :D :devilish:

So simple, but yet so fun for a kid!

[FABombjoy]

In H.S. computers class (DOS 5.0 days), I'd load the ANSI.SYS driver on all computers, and set a prompt with a ton of escape sequences in it. Every time you'd type a command, the screen would resize itself 15 times, the colors would be pink on purple, and the prompt would be in the lower-right hand corner of the display. The poor full-time computer tech didn't know what to make of it.

[Flack]

I remember as a young lad walking to the "Arthur's" department store near my grandmothers and checking out the TI99/4a they had setup for people to demo, and after playing my fill of (?)Munch Man, I would get into where you could type basic commands and do something like:

100 PRINT "SOMETHING OBNOXIOUS"
110 GOTO 100
120 END
RUN


Then I'd hide around the corner and watch the salesperson working the electronics area try to figure out what the hell was going on :D :devilish:

So simple, but yet so fun for a kid!

Here's a funny story.

When I was a kid, my family took me to Toys 'R Us. Lo and behold, there was the exact situation you spoke of. There sat a Commodore 64, complete with a disk drive, printer, and monitor. The whole thing was in plexiglass, except it was mounted where you could type on the keys.

My BASIC program was a few lines longer, but it essentially did the same thing, only it disabled either Run/Stop or Restore (I forget which), but essentually that kept people from stopping the program. I typed in my few lines real quick, and hit ENTER.

Unfortunately, whoever was at the terminal right before me somehow had switched the output from the monitor to the printer. All of a sudden, the printer started printing "Jack Flack was here." Over, and over, and over. On one of those loud ass old dot matrix printers. I tried to break out of the program but couldn't. I quickly walked away and rejoined my family, trying to act cool.

We walked around the store for a while and as we passed the computer aisle on the way out I was trying to be cool and hoped my parents wouldn't notice, but now the plexiglass cube had completely filled up with printer paper which was completely covered with the phrase, "Jack Flack was here".

Jack Flack wished he was not there that day. :eek 2:

[TheSmirk]

Unfortunately, whoever was at the terminal right before me somehow had switched the output from the monitor to the printer. All of a sudden, the printer started printing "Jack Flack was here." Over, and over, and over. On one of those loud ass old dot matrix printers. I tried to break out of the program but couldn't. I quickly walked away and rejoined my family, trying to act cool.


Man, THAT was a funny story :D :D :D

[sniperCCJVQ]

We walked around the store for a while and as we passed the computer aisle on the way out I was trying to be cool and hoped my parents wouldn't notice, but now the plexiglass cube had completely filled up with printer paper which was completely covered with the phrase, "Jack Flack was here".

Jack Flack wished he was not there that day. :eek 2:

Too cool ! LOL

[Captain Wrong]

My all time fave...the Radio Shak Color Computer 3 had an easter egg in the OS when you held a few keys (I can't remember which ones) when you turned it on, it'd bring up a picture of the progrrammers. I used to go to Rat Shack all the time and do that and watch the befuddled sales people try to figure that one out.

[rbudrick]

Jesus, Flack,

You really DO have some great stories! You could write the DP LORE! section all by yourself!

-Rob